For many years, the Seishun 18 Ticket has been one of Japan’s best rail travel bargains. Though seishun is the Japanese word for “youth,” there’s no age limit for the Seishun 18 Ticket, with the name being meant to evoke images of slower-paced, off-the-beaten-path travel with a touch of adventurousness. In many ways, the Seishun 18 Ticket exists as a sort of an opposite-benefit counterpart to the more-famous-among-foreign tourists Japan Rail Pass.
Whereas the Japan Rail Pass has a higher price that gives you unlimited access to some of the fastest trains in Japan to zip back and forth across the country, the Seishun 18 Ticket, which is also provided by Japan Railway Company, is lower-priced, costing only 12,050 yen for five days of unlimited rides on JR trains and BRT highway buses anywhere in Japan, and even some ferries too. The tradeoff for the Seishun 18 Ticket’s lower price is that you can only use local and rapid trains, so the Shinkansen and other high-speed limited express trains are out. Truth be told, though, that limitation hasn’t been so hard to plan around, since the five unlimited travel days could be used at any time during the roughly five weeks the Seishun 18 Ticket is valid.
You could use one day of your pass for the first leg of your trip to head to someplace you want to spend a few days exploring, then hold off on using your second day until you’re ready to move to your next far-off destination. ▼ A beautiful view from the Tohoku region tak.