As mentioned in a previous post, Japan is an expensive country to travel in. Transportation costs are high and it can easily cost you S$20 for transport within the city alone for casual shopping, for instance, meaning that expenses will be much higher if you are planning to take some short tours and do some serious shopping in town.
One way to cut down on your transportation costs is to make full use of promotions offered by each train company. Note that there are a few different train companies running on different lines and each of them come up with concession tickets or special passes every season. So you can be sure that you will more than likely to find at least one type of special pass for the destination you are heading for.
For example, there are all sorts of special train tickets for all sorts of 1-day (or multiple days) passes in Japan. An example is the Tokyo free ticket (Tokyo free kippu) which allows you to travel ride on all the lines of JR, Toei and Metro companies within the 23 wards for just 1, 580 yen. Keep a lookout for posters in or near train stations which states the type of ticket, the prefecture or effective area where you can use the ticket (normally ride-all-you-can within a certain geographical area), and the duration that the ticket is on sale plus its expiration. Obviously, with the correct usage, such tickets can be much cheaper than buying the individual tickets on separate occasions.
Needless to say, this means that you have to plan your route and calculate your expected transport expenses before deciding which alternative suits your needs. Many people tend to have the misconception that special passes will definitely be cheaper no matter what. At the end of the day, they end up not making full of the passes, and may realise that they have forked out more than what they planned for.
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