Once you purchase the Green Car fare from a special machine, you wave the SUICA card over the seat that you wish to sit in and the light above you will turn from red to green. The fare for these seats between Tokyo and Odawara is �950 on weekdays and �750 on weekends and holidays; you can also purchase a Green Car seat on the train for an additional �250 surcharge. Holders of the Green Car Japan Rail Pass and JR East Pass can use these seats at no additional charge, and with no fare tickets required: simply board a train with a Green Car, show your Green Car pass to the attendant and inform him/her of your destination.
Without any sort of JR pass, the regular fare from Tokyo to Odawara is �1450 (additional for the Green Car); the trip takes about 70 minutes.
The affordable method of reaching Hakone from Tokyo is to take the Odakyu Odawara Line from Shinjuku station. The fastest train on the Odakyu Line is the Hakone Limited Express train which runs twice an hour for most of the day. The 85-minute journey makes only two stops enroute and costs �2020. Note that some trains, called Super Hakone use newer train equipment, while evening rush hour runs from Shinjuku are called Home Way. The slower Odakyu express train (runs twice an hour at a cost of only �1150, reaching Hakone in two hours.
Rail connections can be made at Odawara from Nagoya (2 1/2 hrs), Kyoto (3 hrs) and other locations throughout Japan
