Japan has been my great white whale of traveling (there’s a Moby Dick reference for you and no, I’ve never read it). I’ve always wanted to visit there as long as I can remember, but I’ve always found excuses to go to other places as it seems a very intimidating place to visit compared to other locations in Asia and Europe. I don’t mean that it’s at all dangerous or difficult to get to, just that there is a ton to do and see, so planning an itinerary seemed difficult in terms of what to include in a relatively short visit. We flew through Tokyo on our way back from SE Asia last year, but did not leave the airport so that doesn’t count as visiting Japan.

Well, we’re finally headed to Japan for real. We had promised our daughter a visit to Japan when she graduated college. Unfortunately, she graduated in 2021 when international travel was still difficult under Covid conditions, especially to Asia. After she finished grad school and moved back to the Atlanta area last year, we decided we would finally make plans for Japan. Since she was fairly young, she’s been pretty obsessed with Japanese culture, including Japanese music, anime and manga, so this is her dream destination.

We were a bit restricted on our dates. I would have preferred to go in the fall of 2026 when the weather is cooler and more pleasant. However, her favorite Japanese band does an anniversary show every year and in 2026, it’s their 20th anniversary show in Osaka on a specific date in August. This was really her only requirement on our ability to plan the trip.

With three adults going, my first task was to figure out how to get us all in premium seats for the long flights to and from Japan. I decided we would try and fly nonstop from the US to Japan and back. If we needed to position within the US, that’s fine. I just did not want to fly elsewhere in Asia and onward to Japan (or vice-versa) as it’s not convenient to places like Hong Kong and Singapore. There are a few ways to unlock premium seats on the best airlines flying to Japan from the US, but all of them are very difficult to find three seats.

After doing some research and asking a few well-traveled points and miles friends, I figured out that Japan Airlines (JAL) was probably going to be our best bet. JAL currently flies its newest A350-1000 aircraft from both DFW and JFK to Haneda airport in Tokyo. I was targeting these flights for award seats. Typically, JAL releases two business class and one first class seat on each flight to partners including British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Qatar Airways and American Airlines. Only two of these partners actually get the award space 360 days out when Japan Airlines also releases award space to its own partners – Cathay and Finnair.

When I first looked at Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles, it seemed they were releasing the seats fairly reliably 360 days out for the flights from JFK and DFW to Haneda. The issue was those releases were at midnight for DFW and 1am for JFK. I figured out the calendar and stayed up late one night to try and grab the seats, but I was unable to get the business class seats. Even though there was a first class seat available from DFW or JFK, I didn’t want to book us on separate days. It’s very likely someone else was stalking the business class space and grabbed it before I could.

I ended up paying for a month of AwardTool, an award booking search engine that includes Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles real-time searches. It made it easier to search multiple cities at once rather than using the clunky AsiaMiles search. My subscription paid off the following morning when I woke up. I saw two business class seats from DFW and one first class seat from JFK on the same day. That was good enough for me. I booked all of them with AsiaMiles. It was 89k per business class seat and 135k for the first class seat. I transferred some points from CapitalOne and some from Amex. I booked myself the first class seat for the journey to Japan and figured I would try and get my wife in first class for the journey home. I think it may be possible for me to switch to the DFW flight (or cancel and rebook) assuming there are still open first class seats on that flight in the weeks before our trip. I’ll probably book myself positioning flights to both DFW and JFK just in case (on different airlines) and cancel the one I don’t use.

Because the DFW flight leaves at 12:05pm and the JFK flight leaves at 1:40pm, we may reduce our risk and fly out to those airports the night before. At DFW, there’s two Hyatts right at the airport. At JFK, there’s the overpriced TWA hotel, but there’s a Hyatt property a short Uber ride away which would be a better deal. We would then have time to sleep in a bit, get some exercise, and visit the lounge before our long flight. We are leaving for Japan on a Monday, which isn’t ideal, but it does allow for us to position on Sunday evening.

After I got the three seats to Japan booked, I spoke with someone else who had taken several trips to Japan on miles and he told me that it might be possible to book the return flights with Finnair Avios. The two good things about that are 1) they supposedly get access to JAL award space at the same time as Cathay Pacific and 2) I have a big balance of Avios from previous Amex transfer bonuses as I use them quite often. Avios can be transferred between British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Qatar Airways. I stalked Finnair and saw some business class seats showing up but then a few days before I needed to book our return flights, the space seemed to just dry up. Cathay Pacific was showing the one first class seat for JFK and DFW at schedule release (which thankfully for the ex-Japan flights was at 11am my time and not the middle of the night), but no business class seats at all. Finnair required a call to get the first class seat if it was available. I was starting to think getting three business/first class seats for the return was just about impossible.

I also checked JAL’s own program and to my surprise, I saw the business class seats available, even several days after release. They are also priced at an incredible 55k per person, which is less than most business class seats to Europe these days. I realized that Bilt transfers to JAL and I had enough Bilt points to at least get the two business class seats for 110k points. Rather than risking Cathay or Finnair all of a sudden showing availability, I transferred the points to JAL in advance of the day I needed to book the seats.

Yesterday morning, I logged into JAL at 11am and booked the two HND-JFK business class seats for the 11:05am flight which gets us in around the same time in New York in plenty of time to catch a flight back to Atlanta. I also called Finnair to get the first class seat, but they could not see any availability to either JFK or DFW. At that point, I checked Cathay, saw the JFK first class seat available, transferred 135k from Amex and just booked it for my wife. Now we were all on the same flight home from Japan.

I now have almost a year to plan the trip. My initial thoughts are that we would just fly directly on to Osaka from Haneda airport and spend four nights there, We could take a day tour to Hiroshima from there, see the famous Nara deer and enjoy the city. From there, we will stay two nights in Kyoto and move on to Tokyo for five nights. There’s lots of things to do and see in all of these places and we also are big Japanese food eaters so we can’t wait to try (almost) everything on the menus there.

While it wasn’t cheap (558k total points plus around $1200 in taxes and fees all in for three people round trip), I was pretty happy with the ability to grab three premium seats each way on the newest plane in JAL’s fleet. I’ll have further updates throughout the year as this trip comes together.

If you have questions about this post, let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links.