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Old 06-08-2012, 10:31 PM   #8
Rennis Buchner
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 62
Japan
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Re: Shinjuku to Nagoya

Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote: View Post
There was a horrendous accident recently, when a bus driver fell asleep at the wheel and drove his overnight bus into a crash barrier and then a sound-deadening wall. The bus hit the end of the wall head on and the wall sliced through the bus and killed 7, injuring many more. The resulting investigation revealed that the expressway bus industry is only lightly regulated and the rules are largely ignored. There is a maze of contracts and sub-contracts and the driver was exhausted even before he set out on the trip. (He used his rest time for one company to drive another bus on another tour for a separate company.)

So I would not touch most of the trips offered on the Rakuten website.
I on the other hand have been using overnight buses to go from, first, Akita to Osaka and back, and more recently from Yamagata to Osaka and back (not to mention Tokyo) regularly for about seven years now and average 4 to 6 round trips a year. Every bus I have ever ridden has had two rotating drivers and zero issues at all. With that said everything I have ridden has either been through the major "prefectural" transit company or a major company like Kintetsu. As long as you are smart about it things should be fine. With that said, from Tokyo to Nagoya I'd probably just take the shinkansen myself.

Rennis
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