[ekianjo]

> It is interesting to note that the original lines are now considered 'super profitable'.

They are super profitable because they are super expensive as well, and because they carry mainly businessmen. I take the shinkansen relatively often and most of the time it's all people wearing suits, not leisure travelers. When it's not your company paying for your trip, it's way cheaper to take the bus, the plane or drive with your own car (at least if you are not alone).

Note that JR Shinkansen lines never have any discounts. There is a single price, and that's it. No price elasticity, even if some mid-day Shinkansen run half empty. Their marketing is also stuck in the 50s.

[patio11]

For the benefit of HNers thinking they might want to visit Japan someday:

There are basically only two discounts for the shinkansen -- one is multi-trip tickets (回数券 -- which are mostly for businesses).

The other is something which is half a discount and half just outright subsidization of policy goals, the JR Rail Pass. It is a special ticket, only available to people who are visiting Japan and don't hold either a Japanese passport or mid/long-term visa, which gets you all-you-can-eat access to all of the JR lines (including the shinkansen, less one class of them). The cost for a week-long pass is less than that of a roundtrip ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto.

If you ever come to Japan, make sure you buy a voucher for one of these before you leave home, since they're not sold here.

[SoftwareMaven]

Many countries/regions have similar passes. I've used both BritRail and EuroRail passes in a similar way. Very much worth looking into; I got to see Scotland on a result.

[ekianjo]

Good point, but I was mentioning the discounts from a Local person point of view.

[rurounijones]

What about those hole-in-the-wall discount ticket places that always seem to have Shinkansen tickets?

Where do they fit in?

[ekianjo]

They are not official discounts. They are high volume rebates coming from third parties who buy tons of tickets and then resell them at a little cheaper price.

But you don't save much, really. It's in the order of 5 to 10% most of the time.

[rurounijones]

Gracias, never used them so not sure what the setup was.