If you are entering Japan as a tourist or if you are Japanese national with proof of overseas residency (California driver's license/ID for most UC students), I highly recommend getting a JR Pass before you leave the US. For those of us going to Keio, we weren't able to get our student visas in time before we came to Tokyo so we came in with tourist visas. The benefit of coming with tourist visas is that I was eligible to buy a JR pass which costs me US$353 for a 7-day pass. It gives me unlimited rides on all JR lines and buses including Shinkansen (with the exception of Nozomi trains). With the pass, I went to Kyoto for 4 days, a day trip to Nagoya and probably another short day trip tomorrow.
The mandatory orientations made it difficult to have a long trip but I still highly recommend it because it allows to travel within Tokyo on all JR lines too.
You can only get the voucher for JR pass outside of Japan and exchange it for the actual pass in JR stations in Japan.
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