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Just returned from Japan as a group of 8 people. We had slightly different itineraries and so half the group had purchased the JR pass. We were there for 16 days total and when I had done the calculation for all of the places we were travelling we ended up saving about $80 CAD by not using the JR pass.
It was also slightly inconvenient at times because there were instances where our friends with the JR pass had to then spend additional money to take non-JR lines to stay with us (because at times the non-JR lines were more convenient/faster than the JR equivalent).
Overall I think if you're doing the whole Tokyo -> Osaka and back within 7 days its' or travelling further within 14 it can be totally worthwhile to use the JR pass and you can actually save quite a bit, this just wasn't the case for our trip. We ended up travelling from Tokyo --> Osaka (+ Half day trip to Nara) --> Kyoto --> Back to Tokyo.
Additionally, so long as you have data or connect to wifi travel in general is super simple to navigate within Japan, and their Pasmo/Suica cards (similar to HK octopus or London's Oyster card) make it easy to just tap in/out and go.
As for network, I ended up purchasing the Zen Sim from Amazon (7.99 USD) before our trip and it worked perfectly during our travel. I found the pricing to be really competitive too and the network on 4G worked great during our entire trip and I was constantly uploading videos/pictures on snapchat/instagram, loading maps and google for restaurant reviews, etc.
If anyone wants a copy of my travel itinerary and places we went feel free to PM me and I can share the google doc we put together.
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