Japan on Points: Tokyo, Kyoto & Beyond

Japan is arguably the best-designed points trip in the hobby right now: a genuinely cheap business-class flight over, paired with a hotel program that has real, well-priced properties in exactly the cities you want to visit.

The flight: ANA business class

Transfer Amex Membership Rewards to ANA Mileage Club (the only major bank that connects to it, 1:1) and a round-trip U.S.–Tokyo business-class ticket runs roughly 75,000–90,000 miles — because ANA prices round trips as a single unit rather than doubling a one-way fare. Search and hold your outbound the moment it opens (355 days out, 9 a.m. JST) with a flexible placeholder return, then lock in your real return date as it opens.

The hotels: World of Hyatt

• Tokyo: the Park Hyatt Tokyo and Hyatt Regency Tokyo both sit in Hyatt’s fixed award chart, meaning the points cost is known in advance — no dynamic-pricing guesswork.
• Kyoto: Hyatt’s smaller Kyoto footprint still delivers strong value relative to the city’s famously high cash rates during peak cherry-blossom and autumn-foliage seasons.
• Because Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserve is Hyatt’s only transfer partner, plan your Chase point balance around this trip specifically if hotels are the priority.

A sample points blueprint

• Fly: Amex → ANA business class, U.S. to Tokyo (Haneda), round-trip.
• Stay: Chase → Hyatt points for 4–5 nights in Tokyo, then 2–3 in Kyoto via bullet train.
• Everything else: bullet train reservations, museum tickets, and dining are best paid in cash — Japan’s public transit and dining scenes are inexpensive enough that saving points for flights and hotels is the higher-leverage move.

The bottom line

Japan rewards exactly the kind of planning this hobby is built for: one flight transfer (Amex → ANA) and one hotel transfer (Chase → Hyatt), both with fixed, calculable pricing. Few destinations let you plan a premium trip this precisely this far in advance.