Must see/do's in Kyoto/Tokyo

Not by NRT, but I know a very affordable one in Ichikawa which is on the Narita side of Tokyo, and has a direct connection on the Keisei line. Not very high-standard, but I had a great time nonetheless. http://www.cozyhouse.net/html/TokyoI.html

 

well the problem i have at the moment is: I get into Tokyo at 9pm, assuming I get out of the airport quickly, it'll be 10pm. If I commute into Tokyo I probably won't be at my hostel/hotel room till midnight (and im going to be very tired after a 16hour flight). Is there any other alternatives?

 

http://www.jyh.or.jp/english/index.html they seem to have a hostel near Narita. Should that, for some reason, prove unfeasible, the hostel I mentioned earlier might still be worth consideration: granted, it's about an hour from Narita by train, but you can get off at Konodai station and it's literally a 2 minute walk from there.

 

cheers dude! got another question now!
I cant really afford to buy a JR rail pass (ill be fine in Tokyo). But I want to travel return to Kyoto once. Does anyone know the cost? I should be travelling with a Japanese girl, so there shouldnt be a language barrier. Surely it cant cost more than the £100 (roughly) which a JR pass costs?

Thanks for all the help

 

From what I heard, a Shinkansen round-trip ticket to Kyoto costs roughly the same as a JR pass!
You can, however, use the "normal" JR trains, which is a lot cheaper. Information in English is quite scarce though, and it takes you some seven hours. Not recommended!

Also, if you're going off-season, you *might* find a flight that's cheaper, but I wouldn't count on it. I recall some domestic flight discount for foreigners that let you fly anywhere in Japan for only 12000 yen.

 

Cheap flights seem to have escaped Japan at the moment... at least my wife tells me as much. Shinkansen to Kyoto according to this is 13,000 yen each way. Might as well get the pass.

Avoid taking the local trains. Only foreigners do that (I did it) but you're talking about wasting quite literally, an entire afternoon to save maybe $150. I would assume your time there is worth more than that.