LM comments

A few people here are saying that tourists should pay the same as locals... I get it, but for a relatively modest discount, encouraging mobility of tourists brings in much needed income to all areas of Japan. The easier it is to move tourists off the Golden Route, the more beneficial it is to those communities.

The proposed change is going to be very annoying for most locals. Now you're going to have WAY more people on the Nozomi trains. You see more tourists than locals on the Hikari trains under the current system, so most Japanese travelers weren't really directly impacted on the Tokyo-Osaka route. Now that passes are less worthwhile, people will be taking the faster Nozomi trains, and create more congestion.

Also not great from a sustainability perspective. People will be taking more domestic flights. I can fly from NRT to HIJ for under 7000yen one way with a discount carrier.

If they changed the pass to 50000yen for 5 or 7 unique travel days in a 3 week period, that would have been more interesting.