Packed and Small Itinerary Change

Quick post just showing our packs and a change we decided to make.  Originally we planned on staying 3 nights in Osaka.  I (Alex) was already a little wishy-washy on that leg of the trip.  We changed those nights to Kobe, which is like a 30 minute train ride West of Osaka.  The reasons are:

• Osaka, especially the area we were going to be in is crowded with tourists and Kobe is I believe going to be a lot more chill
• Slightly improves time on both our day trips, but especially our trip to Awaji Island
• I've already been to Osaka and prefer not repeating too much on this trip 
• We still get to stop in Osaka for a good part of day on our way from Kyoto
• Kobe seems nice

So here's the updated map:

And our bags.  They're pretty tightly packed so I skipped the pic of the interiors.  As a guy I have the luxury of pretty easily squeezing my clothes in a single bag and had some room for Sarah's 2nd pair of shoes.  Weather will probably be around 35°-55°F so we have some layerable stuff, hats, those cheapo stretchy gloves.

Put our yen that we got ahead of time in my hidden cash belt.  Its not really about preventing stealing but just that I know I'll always have it on me.  The money we just get it from the bank although they take a percent off the top.  I've seen that getting cash at ATMs gives a better rate but we just like having some in advance.

We have some other stuff like small medicine container for like ibuprofen, dramamine, benadryl.  We have a little travel pack with a sink stopper and laundry soap for cleaning stuff in hotel sinks if we need to.  Passports, toiletries, and a couple battery packs.  I'm bringing my Kobo e-reader.  We've also printed off all our tickets, hotel info etc, so should be good there.

Next post will probably won't be until we start the trip!

Japan 2025 Itinerary & Budget

Alex here.  This year flew by, and Sarah and I are on the cusp of another exciting trip.  We're going to Japan on what was the original idea for our honeymoon.  However during wedding and honeymoon planning, Japan was still closed to travel due to Covid (didn't fully open back up until Oct 2022, and then it wasn't until May 2023 that they dropped all Covid restrictions).  As a result we went on a Europe trip where we were hosted by many of my friends from online (and had a lovely time).  But...now we're ready to burn some points and have the trip we've wanted to make.

I had a wonderful time in Japan almost 6 years ago now when I went solo.  It did get a little lonely by week 3 and I texted Sarah more often those days.  This time around I'm excited to have it as a shared experience.  In planning it I tried to strike a balance where I didn't want to repeat many things/places but also didn't want Sarah to miss out on things just because I'd seen or done them.

In my previous trip I largely planned my trip around seeing the 3 major central Japan cities Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo with transportation plans between them and then left the days open for *mostly* aimless wandering and some daytrips.  This time we'll have a little less "flexibility" since we'll be transiting more, but can still mostly pick and choose what we want to do.

Finally before the deets, the USD to JPY (Japan yen) exchange rate is insanely good right now so hoping it stays good for the next month.  When I was there, $1 = ¥110. If you figure a soda in a vending machine was ¥100-150 it was not bad. Right now $1 = ¥150. So the buck goes 1.5 times further.

Itinerary (8 Hotels, 18 days excluding flights)

January-----------
5:              Leave MN to Chicago via United (stay for 8ish hours at hotel)
6:              Leave Chicago to Tokyo via ANA
7-9:           Tokyo
10:            Kusatsu
11-12:       Kanazawa
13-15:       Stay in Takayama with stop in Shirakawa-Go and day trip to Hida Furukawa
16:            Gero
17-18:       Kyoto
19-21:       Osaka, day trips to Hiroshima and Awaji Island
22-24:       Tokyo
25:            Leave JP to Chicgo via ANA, then Chicago to MN via United

                My beautiful MS Paint Map of the trip

Budget ($7,088   or   $3,544/person):

A good amount of this trip was booked using points and for the budget purposes I'll have the total but won't try to compare them to the "actual" cost. For example, Sarah is flying out and back on First Class. (I'm flying out on Biz class and back on First). A single round trip first class flight on ANA from Chicago to Japan is currently: $24,704 What we paid for it was 150,000 points. So I'll have a separate section at the bottom on this.

Flights ($1,203): 

Airlines:  $1,203 (fees) + Points

Hotels/AirBNB ($1,966):   

The Knot - Shinjuku, Tokyo         $302 (3 nights) 
Nakamuraya Ryokan, Kusatsu     $235/ ¥35,600  (1 night) pay there
AirBNB, Kanazawa                      $171 (2 nights)
AirBNB, Takayama                      $350 (3 nights)
Shougetsu Ryokan, Gero              $670/¥101,200 (1 night) pay there
Park Hyatt, Kyoto                         Points
Henn na Hotel, Osaka:                  $238 (3 nights)
Andaz, Tokyo                                Points

Food ($1545):

For food I'm estimating at $30/each per day.  For days I'm not including flight days, days at Ryokans (which provide meals), and we have one meal reserved during the trip

Normal meals:                               $960
Yasaka, Kyoto:                              $585

Transportation ($1144):

Mostly trains between cities, 1 bus, and then local trains/subway

Intercity:                                        $1044
Intracity:                                        $100

Miscellaneous/Entrance Fees/Souvenirs ($1,050):

Trip Insurance                               $132 
Sumo Tickets                                $318
Other                                             $600 

Thanks for reading! Next post will be our packs and then in a little less than a month we'll be on our way!

POINTS (482,500 points - In case anyone cares):

This trip, or certainly the flights were reasons that I started getting into travel/credit card/airline points in the first place.  ANA (All Nippon Airlines) has notoriously excellent redemption rates for their Business and First Class seats, that is CPP (Cents per point), which is also to say that you can get a very expensive very nice flight for much cheaper.  But there's a LOT that went into this and a huge amount of time/research and truly a lot of lost sleep and stressful nights.  I'll just summarize the redemptions I made on this trip and then give a high level overview of the crap I went through to get those plane tickets.  If you read the blog where we are on the planes you can see why it was (hopefully :) ) worth it.

Chicago Regency Hyatt: free night certificate (annual perk of Hyatt card)

2x United Economy Roun trip flight Minneapolis to Chicago:  60,000 ANA points (transferred from Amex)

ANA First Class Round trip flight Chicago to Tokyo:  150,000 ANA points, (transferred from Amex)

ANA Biz Class out, First Class back Chicago to Tokyo:   112,500 ANA points (transferred from Amex)

Park Hyatt Kyoto 2-nights:  85,000 Hyatt Points (from Hyatt acct and Chase points transfer)

Andaz Tokyo 3-nights:  75,000 Hyatt Points (from Hyatt acct and Chase points transfer)

Ok, the ANA Flights.  These tickets are highly sought after and fairly difficult to get.  Other airlines like United or Delta would charge 700,000+ points for a single roundtrip First Class ticket.  Here's the bulletin points:

• ANA doesn't always have award seats available on planes and there's no consistency.  They typically only have 1 biz class and 1 first class seat available on each flight.  This is why our flight out we're in separate classes
  
  
• Because of the competitive nature of these seat awards (people wanting them) you have to book them RIGHT when they become available which is 355 days in advance the MINUTE the site updates with available seats (which is 9am JST/6pm CST)
  
  
• ANA requires you to book round trip for points booking.  And this is a big one.  What this means is that you might see an outbound seat you want, but you cant book it for 24 hours because you have to wait for return flights to become available for the next day so you can make it a round trip flight.  So the strategy is to book a flight out with a return flight the next day.  Then you have to move your return flight (which you can do for free) onto a return date you actually want, but you also are still competing with other people on this.
  
  
• Transferring points from American Express to ANA points can take up to 3 days (1 day for me).  This means you have to have the points in your ANA account READY TO GO to book the flight.  There's no going back, once the points are transferred they're there AND they will expire in 2 years.  So you gotta be sure you know what you're doing
  
  
• These are direct flights only so you have to reposition if you aren't near cities they fly out of (San Fran, Chicago, New York, Houston, Atlanta)
  
  
• The site allows you to book seats and be on the waitlist but it is a trap.  99% of the time the waitlisted seats will not become available and if any leg of the trip is waitlisted by the time you fly all legs are cancelled

Here are the things I did to achieve:

• Read a lot on the subject, listened to podcasts
• Practiced for days in advance to book award flights, make sure I understood procedure
• Called ANA several times just make sure I knew what their wait time was (it was like 45 minutes)
• Kept a window of available dates we could travel on (flexibility)
• Transferred 330,000 points from Amex to ANA (to cover up to needed 4 first class seats + extra just in case)
• Booked a flight out on the 6th (1 biz, 1 first) and a return on the 7th (2 first).  This also made me nervous because it meant that the return flight that I moved to would also need 2 first class seats available, something that was not frequent)
• Once I booked the flights I knew I'd have to wait several weeks (2 weeks) before there were return dates I could change the return flight to.  During this time I tracked every day what award flights were available (none/1 biz 1 first/etc)  To try to see a pattern.  These were stressful days
• The first date where a return flight was available I tried to move it on the website and received an error several times over the course of 15 minutes.  Then someone else took those flights.  This made me horribly nervous
• Next day seats were available and had called in advance and was on hold.  Got through and was able to move the return flights successfully.  Huge relief
• 3 days out 2 first class seats showed up again and I was able to call in and book for an even better trip length.  Then booked the United flights through them with leftover points