JR Central, JR West, and JR Kyushu will launch “LINE Kara EX,” a new service that allows users to reserve tickets for the Tokaido, Sanyo, and Kyushu Shinkansen lines on the LINE communication app, provided by LY Corporation, starting at 5:30 AM on October 4 (Sat), 2025.
¥100 off the price of paper tickets
This new service aims to make online reservations more accessible. Simply add the official LINE account “Tokaido, Sanyo & Kyushu Shinkansen Reservation” as a friend on your smartphone, link your account, and agree to the terms and conditions to instantly make a Shinkansen reservation. Payment is exclusively via PayPay, and no credit card registration or annual fee is required. Ticketless boarding is possible by simply holding a pre-registered transportation IC card or a boarding QR code issued after booking over the ticket gate.
The price for a reserved seat on the Nozomi train between Tokyo Station and Shin-Osaka Station during normal travel periods is ¥14,620 via LINE, a ¥100 savings over paper tickets. However, it is more expensive than the currently available online reservation services, Smart EX (¥14,520, no annual fee) and Express Reservation (¥14,230, annual fee ¥1,100). Other limitations compared to existing EX services include a refund fee for reservation changes, limited reservation times between 5:30 AM and 11:30 PM, and the lack of a seat map function that allows users to check seat availability while selecting a seat. Furthermore, while Smart EX and Express Reservation allow Shinkansen reservations up to one year in advance, LINE EX reservations open from 10:00 AM one month in advance, which is also a different acceptance period.
The “Seat Information” issued at ticket gates discontinued
The three companies also plan to make some changes to their current EX services. When using Smart EX or Express Reservation for ticketless boarding, an “EX Ticket Ticket (Seat Information)” is automatically printed from the Shinkansen automatic ticket gates, but issuance of this sheet is scheduled to end around summer 2026. As a replacement, the company plans to offer a service that allows users to easily check their reserved seats on the “EX App.”
In addition, new issuance and reissues of the “EX-IC Card” distributed when joining Express Reservation will cease around summer 2026, and boarding services using the EX-IC Card will end around summer 2027. This is in light of the service revisions made in March 2021, which created an environment where ticketless boarding is possible on both Shinkansen and conventional lines using a single transportation IC card, such as “TOICA.” Going forward, all boarding services will be unified to transportation IC cards. Members currently using EX-IC cards for ticketless boarding are urged to register their transportation IC cards before the service ends.
