The shinkansen bullet train is probably the best way to get around Japan, but many of the passes offered by JR are available only to foreign visitors, leaving foreign residents unable to take advantage. However, from 1 April 2021, JR East is making two of its most popular passes available to all foreign passport holders, whether living here or not.
The Tohoku Area Pass will cost JPY20,000 for adults and JPY10,000 for children, and the Nagano/Niigata Area Pass will cost JPY18,000 for adults, JPY9,000 for children. Both will allow for five consecutive days of unlimited travel on all trains, including the shinkansen, and some JR East bus services.
This will mark a change from the previous version of the pass, which allowed for five days of travel, but on non-consecutive days within two weeks of the first use.
With the Tohoku Area Pass, you'll be able to travel in these prefectures: Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, Ibaraki, Gunma, Tochigi, Miyagi, Fukushima, Yamagata, Akita, Iwate and Aomori. This will allow you to enjoy the sights and action of Sendai, see beautiful Matsushima Bay, visit historical Aizu-Wakamatsu and Hiraizumi, and even get as far as Osore-Zan, a spectral temple complex at the top of a steaming volcano in the remotest reaches of Aomori.
Using the Nagano/Niigata Area Pass, you'll be able to travel around any and all of Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, Ibaraki, Gunma, Nagano and Niigata prefectures. This will cut out much of the north, but does then include Hakuba ski resort and the historic castle town of Matsumoto, and will allow you to see the onsen monkeys near Nagano city.
The passes are available for purchase at any JR East Service Center, or online through the JR East website. When traveling with a pass you'll need to be carrying your passport in case of inspection by the train staff.
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With just 5 consecutive days, it would have only covered the Nagano part of the trip, which barely would have paid off. And it's not like it's getting cheaper now, so you get quite a bit less for a few hundred yen more.
For that same reason I would love to see a nationwide JRP that you could use for just a limited number of days within a couple of weeks. Say, something like 6 or 7 days of travel within a 3 week period. For my first trips to Japan a JRP was a no-brainer, since I'd basically travel the length of the country and back again. Even a 21-day JRP would easily be worth it. But now that I tend to focus more on specific regions, most rail passes are pretty useless: the JRP is just way too expensive, and most regional passes are too limited.
Japan still has a (mostly undeserved!) reputation for being an extremely expensive destination, with the JRP being one of the great "bargains". Which actually still is pretty expensive and requires a LOT of travel to pay off. I've heard so many times that people basically decided the duration of their stay in Japan based on the JRP. And think 60k yen per person for a 3-week JRP is too expensive, so just limit it to one or two weeks. Which is a shame, and could easily be avoided with more flexible options.