Prepaid card that can be used between cities

[Petty]

Hello, I'm going to travel to the area from tokyo to osaka, osaka to
fukui, osaka to nagoya, and osaka to kyoto. it would be very easy for
me to use a prepaid card, but I am really confused what type of card
that i should buy. Is there any card that can be used between cities? 

[Michael Lambe]

Hello there,

It is a little complicated. The major prepaid IC cards are interchangeable. This means you can use any of the prepaid cards inside the areas that are covered by one of the prepaid cards. So for example you can buy a Suica card in eastern Japan and use it inside the area of western Japan covered by the Icoca card. And you can buy an Icoca card in western Japan and use it inside the area of eastern Japan covered by the Suica card. However you cannot use the cards to travel between these areas. So it is not possible to travel from Tokyo to Osaka or from Osaka to Nagoya using a prepaid card.

This map is in Japanese, but it clearly shows the areas covered by the prepaid cards colored yellow: https://www.jr-odekake.net/icoca/area/ You can see there are gaps between these areas. Unfortunately you can't use your prepaid card to travel between these gaps.

However, you can use an Icoca card (or a Suica card) to travel between cities inside the Icoca area. So you can use a prepaid card to travel between Osaka and Kyoto because these cities are within the area covered by the Icoca card. Fukui is not covered by the prepaid card system at all so you cannot use a prepaid card to travel to Fukui or inside Fukui. You should also know that you cannot use any prepaid cards for the shinkansen bullet train.

For more information please check these websites:

http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/suica.html
https://www.westjr.co.jp/global/en/howto/ticket_03.html
http://www.pasmo.co.jp/en/

I hope that helps.

Best wishes,

Michael