A system failure occurred at around 11:25 a.m. on July 1 in “MARS” (Marusu), the ticket sales system used by six JR Group companies, including JR East, JR West, and JR Central, making it difficult to make reserved-seat reservations and use related services at ticket machines at stations nationwide. The system was reportedly fully restored by 1:35 p.m. The cause of the failure is under investigation.
JR East’s “Mobile Suica” also experienced a failure on the same day, but the MARS and Mobile Suica failures are “unrelated.”
From the official MARS website
It’s a large-scale system
Terminal examples
MARS is a large-scale system infrastructure connecting reserved-seat ticket vending machines, Midori-no-madoguchi counters, each company’s online reservation services, travel agency terminals, and more for the six JR Group companies—JR East, JR West, JR Central, JR Shikoku, JR Kyushu, and JR Hokkaido—and is developed and operated by JR Systems. According to the company’s website, it connects approximately 8,300 terminals nationwide and issues an average of more than 1.5 million tickets per day.
JR Kyushu announced at noon on the same day that “since around 11:30 a.m., there has been an incident in which reserved-seat reservations and purchases have been unavailable at stations nationwide and through online train reservations.”
Within JR East’s jurisdiction, reserved-seat ticket vending machines had difficulty connecting for Shinkansen reserved-seat reservations and limited express ticket reservations, while reserved-seat reservations at Midori-no-madoguchi counters and through “Eki-net” were also difficult to use.
