Japan Highway Bus Scraper - Kosokubus Fares, Timetables & Routes

Extract Japanese intercity highway bus data from Kosokubus.com — Japan's largest bus booking aggregator. Returns structured records per route with operator name, seat class, amenities, overnight flag, fares in JPY, availability, and all boarding/alighting stops. Covers Willer Express, all six JR Bus regional subsidiaries, Sakura Kotsu, Keio Bus, Odakyu City Bus, Meitetsu Bus, Kintetsu Bus, Hankyu Bus, and 30+ other operators.

What does the Kosokubus scraper do?

Supply origin and destination prefecture codes, and the actor fetches the Kosokubus bus-list page for each corridor. Each route card is parsed and saved as a structured record. Filters for overnight service, seat class, and female-only seating are applied before saving.

Leave origin or destination blank to crawl all major corridors automatically. Use maxItems to cap the result count for quick sampling without crawling full corridor networks. Raise maxItems to collect every trip on a corridor (the actor follows all result pages, e.g. 36 trips for Tokyo to Osaka). Results reflect the site's default search date (the next day); a corridor with no departures that day returns zero records.

Kosokubus is quick and cheap to read, and the actor reaches it from Japan for geo-consistent results wherever you run it.

What data does it extract?

Each record contains 23 fields per route:

Field	Type	Description
trip_id	string	Internal route code from Kosokubus
operator	string	Operator name in Japanese
operator_en	string	Operator name in English / romaji
route_name	string	Marketed route name (Japanese)
origin_terminal	string	First boarding stop name (Japanese)
origin_city	string	Origin prefecture name
destination_terminal	string	Final alighting stop name (Japanese)
destination_city	string	Destination prefecture name
departure_time	string	Scheduled departure time in JST (HH:MM)
arrival_time	string	Scheduled arrival time in JST (HH:MM)
duration_minutes	integer	Total journey duration in minutes
is_overnight	boolean	True if this is an overnight service
seat_class	string	4-row standard, 3-row relax, 2-row executive, or Cocoon pod
seats_per_row	integer	Seats per row: 2, 3, or 4
amenities	array	wifi, outlet, toilet, blanket, slippers, reading_light, curtain_divider, female_only_area
female_only_seats	boolean	True if the trip offers a women-only seating area (女性専用 badge)
fare_yen	integer	Minimum fare in JPY
fare_yen_max	integer	Maximum fare in JPY when a range is shown
seats_available	integer	Available seats at scrape time
has_toilet	boolean	Toilet onboard; null when the listing does not say
stops	array	All intermediate stops with departure times
booking_url	string	Direct booking detail URL on kosokubus.com
scrape_url	string	Source bus-list page URL

How to use it

Field	Type	Default	Description
origin	string	00013	Origin prefecture code. Leave blank for major corridors.
destination	string	00027	Destination prefecture code. Leave blank for all destinations from the given origin.
overnightOnly	boolean	false	Return only overnight services.
seatClass	string	any	Minimum seat class: any, 4row, 3row, 2row, or pod.
femaleOnly	boolean	false	Return only routes with a female-only seating area.
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum route records to return.

Prefecture code reference

Code	Prefecture
00013	Tokyo (東京)
00027	Osaka (大阪)
00026	Kyoto (京都)
00023	Aichi / Nagoya (愛知)
00040	Fukuoka (福岡)
00014	Kanagawa / Yokohama (神奈川)
00028	Hyogo / Kobe (兵庫)
00034	Hiroshima (広島)

Codes follow the pattern 00001 (Hokkaido) through 00047 (Okinawa). The full list is available at kosokubus.com under the route search form.

Example: Tokyo to Osaka, first 10 routes

{
  "origin": "00013",
  "destination": "00027",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example: overnight buses only from Tokyo to Nagoya

{
  "origin": "00013",
  "destination": "00023",
  "overnightOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 20
}

Use cases

• Travel aggregators — build or update Japan bus search engines with structured route, fare, and availability data
• Inbound tourism apps — show visitors affordable highway-bus alternatives to Shinkansen, with seat-class breakdowns and overnight options
• JR Pass calculators — surface competing bus fares on covered corridors to help travelers evaluate pass value
• Transport researchers — map intercity bus networks, track fare changes, or analyze operator coverage by prefecture pair
• Price monitoring — detect fare changes or availability drops for specific corridors on a scheduled basis

FAQ

How many routes does the scraper collect? Kosokubus lists all routes for a corridor on a single page — typically 1 to 20 per prefecture pair. A full multi-corridor run covering major routes can return 1,000 to 3,000 records nationwide.

How current is the data? Timetable data (routes, stops, durations) is updated seasonally. Availability (seats remaining) and fares change daily — run the actor on a schedule to keep those fields current.

Output is available in JSON, CSV, and Excel via the Apify dataset export panel.