This month several announcements have been made of changes in rail service.

1. JR East, JR West & JR Tokai have teamed up to provide a ticket-less shinkansen service beginning next year on March 29th. This service will initially be available from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka station however, from summer of ‘09 it will be available on the Sanyo shinkansen line, from Shin-Osaka to Hakata station in Fukuoka. In order to participate in this service you must pay an annual fee of 1050 yen to become an IC Card member. JR East’s Mobile Suica members who participate in the service , will not require an IC Card as they can continue to use their phones. Also membership will provide their customers about a 7 to 8% discount on their tickets. Therefore, a ticket from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka of 14, 050 yen will be discounted to 13,000 yen, a savings of 1050 yen.
2. Starting from March of ‘08 all Nozomi and Hikari shinkansen services will stop at Tokyo’s Shinagawa and Shin-Yokohama station.
3. Prepaid PASSNET cards will no longer be available from January 10th, ‘08. The service will be replaced entirely by PASMO. However, you can use existing PASSNET cards up until about March 14. You may also choose to get reimbursed or carry-over funds to your PASMO account. Unlike PASSNET, you will be able to use your PASMO card not only on private metro lines, but also on all JR lines. In addition, PASMO cards can also be used on bus services and act as electronic money at member stores. Since PASMO’s inauguration of March of this year, PASSNET users have shrunk to only about 10%.

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