Japan Rail English website RIP
 

Went to JAPAN RAILWAYS GROUP, only to find that They have links to the English-language versions of each of the rail sites. But given how confusing (at least to me) the rail system is, with all the separate companies, this is too bad.

That seems unfortunate. I'd rather the railway systems be more standardized in Japan.

No surprise, it's been "temporarily" closed for months now. Not very convenient for visitors and others, but luckily I have pretty much memorized the schedules of the trains I use, and their Japanese website is still working.

Hyperdia | Timetable and Route Search in Japan.

If you know where you are and you know where you wanna go.. well.. I don't really think a rail site is necessary since there is this site. Buying special tickets and whatnot is a different story.. but I personally feel that stuff is handled more easily in person.

Second that, also, you can probably get enough information from the JR Pass site, and once you are there, you can pretty much figure everything out.. its no rocket science...

Well, I don't know what information was on that site before, but there hasn't been a actual JNR for a while now and most of the actual information you'd get would still have to be gotten off of the individual JR sites.