How to book a wheelchair space on the Shinkansen

Three kinds of wheelchair seating

Every Tokaido Shinkansen train, the line between Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, carries wheelchair seating, and JR Central offers three kinds. There is a wheelchair space with a train seat beside it, where you can transfer into the seat or stay in your chair; a wheelchair space where you stay in your chair; and the multipurpose room, a small private compartment.

Trains built to the older layout have two wheelchair spaces. Some newer N700S trains have six: three by the window, where you stay in your chair, and three on the aisle with a seat to transfer into.

On a 16-car train the spaces are in car 11. smartEX, the railways' online booking service, sells three kinds of seat there, in English: seat E, the space where you stay in your chair; seat B, the space with a seat to transfer into; and seat A, the companion seat beside them. You book one seat type at a time, so the companion seat is a second pass through the booking. smartEX needs a card set up for 3-D Secure, so check the card well before the booking morning. The multipurpose room is not sold online; ask a station for it.

When the space goes on sale

The wheelchair space goes on sale at 10:00 Japan time on the day one month before travel, and JR Central warns that trains fill, so apply early. Ordinary reserved seats can be booked on smartEX from a year ahead, with the train and seat fixed a month before travel, but the wheelchair seats are left out of that, and there are only a handful of them on each train. For the space where you stay in your chair, JR Central opens the sale a month ahead only on trains it has fixed in advance; on trains it fixes on the morning of travel, that space goes on sale that morning.

Booking early here means booking on the right morning: flights and hotels can be fixed months before the wheelchair space is on sale. Put a reminder in the diary for each rail day, one month before that rail day, not one month before the trip. A plan with three train days has three booking mornings.

Before the morning, choose the exact train, and when you search, set the condition to direct trains only, which smartEX asks for when you book a wheelchair seat.

JR Central also takes requests through a web form, for one train, up to two days before travel, for a ticket bought at a Tokaido Shinkansen station. It registers a request, not a booking: the station answers later, and the train you want may not be available.

The chair's size

JR Central's rule is the same for every kind of wheelchair: up to 120 cm long, 120 cm high and 70 cm wide. If yours is larger, JR Central asks you to get in touch first. Write down the chair's length, width, height and weight before you start, and whether the footrests come off. Taking off the footrests can save about 20 cm, which can bring a long chair inside the 120 cm.

Scooter-type power chairs, the ones steered with handlebars, can travel on the Tokaido Shinkansen only in the multipurpose room of N700S and N700 trains, booked at a station window or by phone, and only if the chair can turn round in less than 1.8 m and take a 1 m right-angle corner without reversing.

If the traveller can transfer and the chair folds

A traveller who can walk a few steps can fold the chair and take an ordinary reserved seat instead of the wheelchair space. A wheelchair needs no advance luggage booking, whatever its size, but the space behind the last row may be used only by passengers who booked JR Central's seat with an oversized baggage area, which is the last row of some cars. Book that seat, which costs nothing extra, as soon as it is on sale: there are only a few in a car.

On the day

Booking the space online does not book help at the station. Ask for it at the ticket window of the station where your journey starts, or by phone, in advance. JR Central then arranges staff and tells the station you are travelling to, so someone meets the train there. Come to the station early. At Tokyo Station the car 11 doors on platforms 16 to 19 have a step of 3 cm and a gap of 7 cm, so a wheelchair can board there without a ramp plate. On JR East's side of Tokyo Station, staff lend a wheelchair on the day for getting to and onto a train; ask at the gate.

JR Central asks that passengers who cannot use the toilet or move about the train alone travel with someone to help. Japanese rail disability discounts need a Japanese disability booklet, so visitors pay the ordinary fare.

For the rest of the journey, from the airport to the hotel, see our notes on trains and airports and on wheelchair taxis.