Northern Kyushu Trip 2023 - JR Kyushu Pass - More about the JR Kyushu Pass (Northern, Southern or All Kyushu Pass and how many days to buy 3 , 5 or 7 days)

After our morning breakfast, we headed to Nagasaki Station, to purchase our Kyushu Pass from the JR Office. It was not crowded at the station and we dont even have to queue. I did not choose to purchase the pass online as I was afraid to make mistake. So I choose to purchase the pass from the station instead on arrival Japan.

JR Kyushu Rail Pass is a great value ticket for foreign visitors to Japan, allowing you to easily travel between multiple cities in Kyushu.There are 4 types of Rail Pass based on passenger needs.

JR KYUSHU RAIL PASS

All Kyushu

Northern Kyushu

Southern Kyushu

Fukuoka Wide 

 For more information on the various type of JR Kyushu Pass, please visit the official website of JR Kyushu Rail Company.

We need to show our passport to purchase the JR Kyushu Pass. We decided to get only 3 days Northern Pass. As this is our first trip to Kyushu, being two senior folks, we decided to only visit few places to get ourselves familar with the city. Dont think we have so much energy to go round the whole Kyushu haha

The northern pass only allow us to use the pass to take the shinkansen and JR Train for unlimited time for only 3 days. The pass need to be used consecutively for 3 days and no skipping of days in between once activated the pass.

My three days for the JR Kyushu Northern Pass is as follows:

Day 1 of activation of pass - Nagasaki Station to Fukuoka Station (with seat reservation and luggage reservation)

Day 2 of activation of pass - Fukuoka Station to Kumamoto Station.(with seat reservation only - as only a day trip )

Day 3 of activation of pass -  Fukuoka Station to Beppu Station (with seat reservation only - as only a day trip) - unfortunately I had to forfeit day 3 of activation of pass as I need to return to Singapore urgently due to family matter (will post more of this later) - so I did not make the trip to Beppu and fly back to Singapore.

This is the main pass that need to slide though the gantry each time we want to take the shinkansen or JR Trains.

We can also make seat reservations at the JR Office. We are only allow to make 6 seat reservation per person.

These are two tickets that I make reservations for going from Nagasaki Station to Fukuoka Station. There is no direct shinkansen train from Nagasaki Station all the way to Fukuoka Station but in between we need to change train, that's why there are two tickets for each of us.

First from Nagasaki Station we took the Nishikyushu Shinkansen  "Kamome 16" train to Takeo Onsen Station. The journey is about 30 minutes. Then we just crossed over to the other platform to board the "Relay Kamome" limited express train to Fukuoka Station. The journey is 1 hour. 

The transfer for the timing we choose is only 3 mins. So walking over the platform is less than a minute including dragging our luggage across. 

Remember that when making seat reservations on all Shinkansen remember to also reserve large luggages. For other trains, it is not necessary to reserve large luggages. Otherwise there's a penalty for bring large luagges in Shinkansen. Reservation of seats and luggages are free for the JR Kyushu Pass.

As I am not sure of the return timing for some tickets, I choose to reserve seats when I went to Fukuoka or Kumanoto (Will post details on making extra seat reservations at Fukuoka Station in later post).

Please visit the official website or watch the video for more information.