As you spotted one of the great things about the pass is that it gets you on that night train to Sapporo at a pretty decent discount, so you can skip a hotel for a night and spend it on the night train charge instead.

Your points about the punctuality are spot on too. You can also use it to your advantage – I can’t read much Japanese, and find it hard to hear announcements on trains. To make sure I didn’t miss my stop, I just set my watch alarm to 5 mins before the train is scheduled to arrive at my stop, and bingo, I never missed a stop!