JR passes are phenomenal value, and give you a lot of flexibility. We once caught the wrong train from Nara and ended up in Osaka instead of Kyoto. No big deal:

JR passes are phenomenal value, and give you a lot of flexibility. We once caught the wrong train from Nara and ended up in Osaka instead of Kyoto. No big deal: the next Shinkansen was a fifteen-minute wait, made the 50km trip in about the same amount of time, and cost us zero dollars on top of what we'd already paid for our passes.