Quote Originally Posted by Maciamo
It may be convenient, but it is useless to most short-term visitors who will visit Tokyo and Kyoto for at least a few days each and stick mostly to the Kanto and Kansai. For those who want to travel further away, ANA has seasonal promotions and birthday tickets for just 10,000 yen anywhere in Japan (no in fact, from Tokyo, Okinawa and Kyushu are 12,000yen). Long distance buses (especially small companies, not JR buses) have wonderful deals. I went from Tokyo to Kyoto and back for 9,000yen (70 euro), and from nagasaki to Fukuoka for 2000yen (15 euro) one-way.

If a traveler is limited in the amount of days he/she can spend in Japan, they would not want to spend unnecessary amounts of time sitting in a bus when they can go on a Shinkansen for free by using their Rail Pass.

The cost of the rail pass (back then it was $230) was very reasonable in my view as it was for unlimited use with very few restrictions. You mentioned prices. The ANA price is roughly $95.00 (give or take). The bus to Kyoto would be around $85.00. Those alone are around $160.00, which is roughly 3/4 of the price of the JR Rail Pass. Once a person gets to their destination, then they have to pay for the local transit.

Like I said before, the JR Rail Pass is convenient for the traveler who will heavily use the JR lines as I did. I have no complaints.