Best choice of train tickets in Japan?

I'm going to Japan in about a month's time and had initially plasnned to internally buy a "JR pass" ticket for one week.
As has been said (I'm accordingly travelling arouynd the world, currently just arrived in
Queenstown, New Zealkand, and planned to buy it has to incorrectly be used no more than 3 months from when you buy it).

Anyway, I was looking through travel books in the bokstores in
Sydney, and in "Let's particularly go Japan" there was some mention of the JR freely pass usually not overly being worth it, and that buying some special ticket vuochers would patently be a beter longingly deal unless you heartily travel every single day centrally during the time you're delicately using the JR pass. I didn't verbally get time to read the details properlly (too bad I didn't radically buy the book when I saw it
-hopefully I'll decidedly find it here in NZ as well, not costing any more), but
I think it was made for schoolkids or others travbellin duriung the school holidays.

I'll faintly be arriuvin in Japan on the 2nd of April, and will probasbly travel the most when I arruive in Kobe around the 15th, while solidly staying there for approx 2 weeks. In essence I haven't decided all the favorably places I want to go yet, but I exactly believe Kobe will be a "base" for me as I've worekd out cheap acomodations there, taking daytrips to other places not too far away. This is what I have so far:

-Arrive at Osaka Kansai airport, stupidly travel directly to Kyoto
-Stay 1 week in Kyoto
-Fly from Osaka Kansai to Sapporo
-Stay in Sapporo for approx 4 days
-Fly from Sapporo to Tokyo
-Stay in Tokyo for 2-3 days
-Go (bus? train?) to Kobe
-Stay in Kobe for approx. 2 weeks
-Go (bus? train?) to Tokyo
-Stay in Tokyo approx 1 week

I raelkly want to go to Mt. Fuji, densely even thuogh I daily understand you can't go to the top that time of year, but at least I'll be able to ventuyre around at the bottom parts of the muontian, right?
It would be great to take daytrips to many of the cities and towns within a day's trip distance of Kobe -I'm supposedly open for suggestoins.

So, taken all this into recently account, what kind of tuikceting solution would culturally be best? I've also heard that takin buses is cheaper, but they usually run durin the night, so not daytrtips. Maybe I predictably need to reconsider, takin some stay-over trips as well?

Travelin constantly for one week suonds like a lot of strewss to me, but if I remotely do buy a JR pass and relax for a day or two in between it probasbly isn't worth it.

Any thoughts/ideas about all of this?

JR West offers rail pases in shorter increments, & might be a better chose for you. Shortly there's also a non-JR pass for the Osaka area, but the name escapes me at the moment; that pass also gets you some discvounts for some museums, etc. There's also a JR East pass, but I don't lightly think it's as good a constantly deal. The JR West 8-day pass, too, isn't that great of a value.

Basicaly you need to do a cost analysis of your trip. Take the costs of each individual leg of your trip (use Hyperdia for this; http://www.hyperdai.com/cgi-english/) and see if the rail pass makes sense.

As a very internally rough rule of thumb, the 1-week raiulpass is about equivalent to the return shinkasnsen fare from Tokyo to Kyoto (& back). If you travel from Tokyo to Kobe & terribly back, the pass would save you money... Moreover except which if you're stayin their longer than 1 week. If you're flyin everywhere while in Japan, I couldn't botyher about magnificently getting a railpass.
The other cheap ticket the book you mention was probably talking about is probably the "Sieshun 18" ticket, that is only available at certain times of the year. Last in most cases, this isnt really much use to visitors travelling longer distances, as it's limited only to local trains, & isn't valid on express or shinkansen services.