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Though JR East is raising its ticket prices next month, there's some good news regarding shinkansen tickets. Kagoshima prefecture, located in Japan's southernmost island Kyushu, recently announced a 3.5-billion-yen budget proposal dedicated to promoting regional tourism for 2026 – and part of that plan includes free one-way shinkansen tickets from Hakata Station in Fukuoka to Kagoshima Chuo Station in Kagoshima City for select foreign tourists.
While popular cities like Kyoto and Osaka are grappling with over-tourism, Kagoshima has been dealing with the opposite problem. The region's number of foreign overnight tourists dropped significantly during the pandemic and have yet to bounce back to pre-Covid levels. What's more, direct flights from China have been reduced, likely due to recently strained Japan-China ties.
With these subsidised one-way tickets, the hope is to circumvent the need for direct flights altogether and draw people in from Fukuoka's Hakata Station, about 90 minutes' ride away from Kagoshima City via the Kyushu Shinkansen. Currently, the plan is meant to target only visitors from South Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as these four locations have direct flights to Kagoshima, but the US, Thailand and other countries are being considered as potential candidates in the future.
As for the details on how the free shinkansen ticket system will work and which countries will be eligible, that info will be announced at a later date. In the meantime, get yourself a ticket anyway and check out the winter cherry blossoms blooming all over the country while you still can.
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