JR East to offer ‘random trips’ on Shinkansen at deep discounts

The Asahi Shimbun
September 26, 2022 (Japan)

When users enter the required information on an exclusive website, a random combination of four stations is shown: clockwise from top left, Shin-Aomori, Yonezawa, Niigata and Shiroishi-Zao stations. (Provided by East Japan Railway Co.)

East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) will offer Shinkansen tickets at cheaper rates, with the catch being that the destination will be selected at random.

“We hope passengers will visit places they normally wouldn’t and discover unexpected charms,” a JR East representative said.

The discount service will start on a full-scale basis in December after a three-day trial run between Sept. 29 and Oct. 12.

When users enter the departing station (Tokyo, Ueno or Omiya stations), the times for departure and return and other information on an exclusive website, four out of 47 Shinkansen stations under JR East’s jurisdiction at least 150 kilometers from Tokyo Station will be presented as candidate destinations.

Users can restart the process until they come across their favorite combination.

When they apply for the trip, one of the four stations will be chosen at random as their destination.

Random-destination tickets will be available for members of the JRE Point reward service, which can be used for shopping and charging the Suica IC card.

One JRE Point is equivalent to 1 yen (1.4 cent).

For example, a round-trip Shinkansen ticket between Tokyo and Akita stations normally requires 24,220 JRE Points.

But the random-destination ticket will cost only 6,000 Points.

A regular one-way ticket for the same destination is sold for about 18,000 yen.

West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) started a similar program in July for passengers traveling on a Shinkansen or limited express train to or from its stations in Osaka.

The destination is determined by the roll of virtual dice.

The round-trip ticket costs 5,000 yen, giving passengers a discount of about 50 to 80 percent off the regular prices.

Source
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14719491