Seishun 18 Kippu (Cheaper Train Travel in Japan!)

The Seishun 18 Kippu is a discount rail ticket offered by Japan's JR network. When available (three times a year - around the holidays for Japanese students), it is probably the cheapest way to get around Japan. It costs 11,500 Yen for five days of unlimited travel! Of course, you are taking the slower trains, but who's in a rush anyway? While the name of the ticket refers to a youth pass, anyone can purchase this ticket and use it!

The ticket is five one-day passes condensed onto a single ticket. When using the ticket for the first time, the passenger presents it at the ticket gate to be stamped. The ticket has spaces for five stamps. More than one person can travel on the same ticket: each of the five spaces on the ticket allows one person to ride for one day. Pretty nifty.

I used two of these tickets while traveling through the Tohoku region before my year abroad. What ended up happening was that I wouldn't get stamps on my card daily. I would save my ticket for when I needed to go pretty long distances between the towns I was staying in, calculating the amount of money saved when I used the ticket for the day. It's easy to save on these since train travel in Japan is so expensive! Think about it - 11,500 Yen per ticket, divided by 5 days. If you know you're going to need at least 2,300 Yen of train travel AND you're not really in too much of a rush, these are awesome.