Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel

Booking a Trip to Japan on Points as a Family of 5

• Raya & Duane

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Thanks for finding our podcast! We are a family of 5 who does most of our travel using credit card points and miles and we share how we leverage credit card offers to earn a ton of points/miles so we can afford travel as a larger family.

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If you’re planning family travel to Japan, this episode is a must-listen! Join hosts Raya and Duane from Travel Party of Five as they break down the details of booking a family trip to Japan for five, all using points and miles. From finding the best time of year to travel to selecting airlines and hotel accommodations, they share each step they took to make their upcoming Japan adventure affordable and memorable.

In this episode, Raya and Duane explain how they decided on traveling to Japan during fall break, avoiding Japan’s busy cherry blossom season and hot summers. Since their family can only travel during school breaks, they chose fall for its pleasant weather and more manageable crowds. They also touch on how they strategized the use of points for their entire family to secure affordable flights without sacrificing comfort. Listeners can learn from their research on airline award programs like American Airlines and Singapore Airlines, along with tips for avoiding high fees by selecting Japan Airlines for their main flights.

One of the challenges discussed in planning family travel to Japan was finding flights for five people on points. Raya shares how she worked through each airline’s award program and explains her top choices based on seat availability and costs. Family travel to Japan isn’t complete without talking about transportation and accommodations, so the hosts also cover how they’ll use points to stay at several Hyatt hotels and how they planned in advance to accumulate the points needed for their stay.

Travel Party of Five also talks about tips for positioning flights, which are often necessary when traveling internationally. They explain how to fly from their home city of Phoenix to San Francisco to catch their Japan-bound flight using Alaska Airlines points, sharing how they scored affordable seats for their whole family. They describe each airline’s booking quirks, sharing a few insider tips, like how American Airlines Japan Airlines award seats tend to show up a day later than expected on AA’s site, making it easier to snag deals if you check back at the right times.

In addition to flights, they outline their Japan accommodations booked on points, including the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, the Hyatt Centric Ginza, the Hyatt House Tokyo Shibuya, and the Hyatt Place Kyoto. Since they hold Hyatt Globalist status, they’re planning to enjoy some perks, including potential free breakfast and room upgrades, making family travel to Japan even more cost-effective.

As a family of five, Raya and Duane know the challenges that come with planning a big trip, especially when it’s as far as Japan. They’re excited to explore Tokyo, Kyoto, and local favorites like ramen shops, convenience stores, and perhaps even the base where Duane spent part of his childhood. They also look forward to sharing their experiences and more Japan travel tips after their trip, helping other families plan their own dream vacations.

Tune in to learn how to make a trip to Japan possible for your family with points and miles! You’ll walk away with practical tips on using points for flights and accommodations, as well as how to navigate travel logistics when you have a larger family. For more tips and to follow along on their family travel adventures, find them on Instagram at TravelParty5.

Raya:

If Japan is on your bucket list for a family trip, this is the episode for you. We are talking. All the details of how we booked our trip to Japan next fall for our family of five, all using points. Listen in. Hi, I'm Raya.

Duane:

And.

Raya:

I'm Dwayne, and we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.

Duane:

We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.

Raya:

So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.

Duane:

So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip.

Raya:

Hey guys, welcome back to Travel Party 5 podcast.

Duane:

Welcome back, thanks for tuning in.

Raya:

Today we're going to give you all the details about our trip to Japan. That spoiler alert is not happening for like 11 months, but if I wait until we go on the trip to tell you how I booked it, I'm not going to remember. So today we're going to be giving you all the details and everything we learned doing the research and figuring out the airlines we were going to fly and all that fun stuff. And our trip to Japan is completely booked, with one exception, and we'll get into what that is here in a little bit. So like.

Raya:

I and again when she says we, she means her well, but then we like I do the research and then we talk about it, and then I'm like well, what do you think about this and this and this?

Duane:

you know yes, but I put my input in and she always goes the opposite direction.

Raya:

That's also not true. So I would say the booking of this trip was probably like four to six months in the making before we even started booking anything. Do you agree with that?

Duane:

Yes.

Raya:

And part of that is because I needed to understand number one what airlines I could use points for to get all five of us to japan, and then I needed to make sure that we had the points to do that.

Duane:

So well, even backtracking, you had to figure out when was the best time to go as well oh, for us yes well, and seasons in j, you know that's true because we so we generally can travel.

Raya:

We have three time blocks throughout the year that we can travel because we have kids in regular school. So our kids get a spring break, which is two weeks they obviously have summer, and then they get a fall break, which is two weeks, and our summer is short. Our summer is only about eight weeks and it it ends mid-july, so our kids go back to school middle of july, which is very early. It's incredibly early, but that's also the reason that they get two weeks for fall and spring break instead of one. Yeah, so those are kind of our windows that we have to choose from, and for us it was either we knew we didn't want to go in the summer, because summer in Japan is really hot, human and so we knew it would either be spring or fall break, and spring is when the cherry blossoms happen, which is a really, really busy time there.

Raya:

Yeah, so it's a really popular time and it would be really fun to go and see that, but it's also a really busy time, so you're going to pay peak, peak, peak rates for everything, and we didn't want to do that.

Duane:

No.

Raya:

So we opted for fall break, and we didn't want to do that, no, so we opted for fall break. And so from there, like I was mentioning, I needed to figure out the airlines that we could take and how do we get the points to do that. So that involves applying for and opening certain credit cards and allowing time to meet the minimum minimum spends and have the points deposited so that they're available to use when the flight availability actually opens. So I'm going to tell you all the options for airlines that I considered and then we'll tell you the the ones that we ended up picking. So flying to fly to Japan from the west coast, which we're in Phoenix. So again, that's, that's West Coast, but we were pretty sure we were going to need to reposition, because we talk about this all the time, but for being the fifth or sixth biggest city in America, phoenix has terrible international flight options. So here were my kind of short list of airlines and then we'll tell you the ones we picked. Um, so ANA was the first one that I considered, which stands for is it air Nippon, nippon, nippon, sorry, and you were familiar with that from when you lived in Japan, right? Yeah? Um, the other one do you have something else to say? The other one is Virgin Atlantic Alaska airlines. The other one do you have something else to say? The other one is Virgin Atlantic, alaska Airlines, american Airlines and Singapore. So let me run down.

Raya:

So ANA the issue with ANA for me was that we had to book round trip, so you can't book a points flight one way on ANA, and whenever I would check for availability, I couldn't find five seats available. Like, let me add, the website is really hard to use as a side note, but all of the flights that I found said waitlist when I searched for five people, and basically that means there's no availability but you can put yourself on a waitlist and which will then never open up to you. So that immediately ruled that one out. The other concern I had about ANA and this could be totally made up in my head but when you transfer points from, like, american Express or wherever, to a transfer partner, your name has to match exactly, and our last name has a space. It's two words. But when I signed up on the ANA website for the free account, they don't allow you to put a space. That's weird, yeah, and so I also was a little hesitant. Like, will my points transfer go through? And I don't know the answer if you, if any of you, have a data point where you have a space in your last name it's not a hyphen, it's just a space. You know, maybe send me an Instagram DM or something and let me know. So that ruled that out for me for now. That's too many points to transfer in the hopes that they might make it there. No, thank you.

Raya:

Virgin Atlantic was another possible option, but the flights that I was finding was like 60,000 points one way per person and their taxes and fuel surcharges are also really high. So Virgin Atlantic also no. So Virgin Atlantic also no. Alaska Airlines is a possibility, because you can book Japan Airlines through Alaska Airlines, but it's hard to get points to Alaska Airlines or, I'm sorry, it was hard to get points when I was in the research phase of this. Currently, for a short time, you can currently transfer your American Express membership rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines and then you can transfer directly from Hawaiian to Alaska. But that's a new announcement as of the last few weeks, because the two airlines are merging and I'm assuming that that transfer availability is only going to be possible for a short time. So, depending on when you're listening to this, that may or may not still be an option.

Raya:

And then the last two were American Airlines and Singapore Airlines, and these are the two we ended up going with, and I'll explain why. So American Airlines you can also book Japan Airlines through AA, and we wanted to fly Japan Airlines one way at least. We figured we're going to fly an economy and it's going to be kind of crappy, but at least we can do it on a good airline. And so Japan Airlines is a fantastic airline. So one of the things we decided was okay, we're going to go one way on Japan Airlines and we're going to book it through American Airlines miles. And then the other way we decided on Singapore because they're also a fantastic airline, even in economy, and they have what's called a fifth freedom flight from Narita Airport, which is one of the two main Tokyo airports, to LAX and a fifth freedom flight.

Raya:

Do you know what that is? I do not. It's when an airline flies a route that doesn't start or end in their home country, basically. So obviously Singapore Airlines is based in Singapore, but they fly a flight from the US to Japan and back. The tricky part of that is once you get to LAX, you got to get yourself home because that's not our home airport. So we'll talk about that and we'll go into at the end exactly how many points we used also for all of these. But I want to go back to American Airlines for a minute because there's a couple things that I noticed when I was doing my award searches. And, like for context, I did these award searches like every day for weeks just to try to look for patterns, and Dwayne was like what the heck are you doing? Did you think I was insane?

Duane:

I mean not really, because I know you're very thorough in your searches and really everything you do.

Raya:

I was just trying to understand, like okay, if can I, can I find a flight direct from Phoenix on Japan Airlines Number one? The answer to that was mostly no. A couple of times it did pop up, but sadly it was never on the like. Once we got to where we could actually book it on the dates we were going to travel, it wasn't available. And so then, if I can't fly out of Phoenix, where is the best airport for us to position to to make sure that I can get five seats, even if it's an economy five seats, you know, at 35,000 points a person, because that's what they cost. But when I was first looking I thought, oh, there's a ton, there's a ton of flights right, for 35,000 points in economy from Phoenix to Japan, easy peasy. Well then I realized, oh, but these are not all on Japan Airlines. So a lot of them are just on American Airlines, which is not as good as Japan Airlines. And so you have to specifically look in the flight information for JL. If it says AA, that's an American Airlines operated flight and that's not going to get you on Japan Airlines. You want JL, which stands for, or JL, but the code on the American website says JL and then whatever the flight number is. So if you want Japan Airlines booked through AA, that's what you have to look for.

Raya:

There were, ironically, a lot of premium economy flights available from Phoenix to Tokyo using American Airlines miles on Japan Airline metal, but we didn't have enough points for that. We barely had enough points for the five economy tickets, which was 175,000 points. Premium economy would have been 250. And that would have been basically opening up a whole nother American Airlines credit card and we just I didn't want to do that. Oh yeah, one more tip.

Raya:

The other thing I noticed is that the day that American Airlines would release flights, there would not be any Japan Airlines flights on that day. But if I checked the next business day or the next day, there would be. So let me give you an example, because I feel like that sounded confusing. So let's say, flights open for October 5th 2025. That day, the day that they opened, I could find no Japan Airlines awards available. But if I waited until the next day, when 10-6-25 was going to be opening, I could see Japan Airlines availability on 10-5. So it almost seemed like the flight award availability was open, but the Japan Airlines availability was open, but the japan airlines availability was delayed one day. So just a little tip if you're trying to do this same trip that's just how it is.

Duane:

Do you know why that?

Raya:

is. I have no idea why I couldn't find anything online that said that. I just happened to notice, like. So I was checking on, it was a, I think that I was able to book our outbound flight, and I don't know what day it was, but the day we were flying or trying to buy the tickets for it was a Saturday, and so I was checking and flights for Saturday were open and flights on Friday had direct flights from Phoenix I mean not direct, but Phoenix to LAX, to Tokyo, bookable with American Airlines for 35,000 points on Japan Airlines, and so I like could have booked it.

Raya:

But we can't leave Friday, we have to leave Saturday, and so when I checked back the next day, I was excited, thinking ooh, like maybe that will be available again. Not only was it not available, but neither was the Friday flight that I found, so someone scooped that up too, if that was you respect. Okay, so then we're going to fly there on Japan Airlines, so that's booked. We're going to fly back on Singapore Airlines using their fifth freedom flight into LAX. Booking on Singapore Airlines is super easy. You have to make a Chris Flyer account that is what their membership miles or whatever is called. Obviously, make sure your names match exactly and then you link it to your Amex account so you can transfer. It says transfers take 48 hours, but mine was instant and I found that to be super easy experience.

Duane:

So all this is American Express points basically.

Raya:

Well, american Airlines points for the flight there and American Express points transferred to Singapore for the way back. Yes, okay, so those are our main flights we're actually flying. Our flight to Japan is out of San Francisco, so now we have to position twice. And I think like, when you talk about positioning flights, it's like it's no big deal, right, it's like not very far For us, what it's a two-hour flight to San Francisco, yeah, if that. So you think like, oh, it shouldn't be that much money, right?

Duane:

I mean, you would think that.

Raya:

But it is because there's five of us In my brain. A flight from Phoenix to San Francisco should cost $150 or less.

Duane:

I mean, you would think.

Raya:

But it doesn't.

Duane:

And being that it's so far in advance, I would think it would be cheap. But I think if you book the closer to the flight is it cheaper. I mean it just depends, which I think is silly.

Raya:

It totally depends, but when you're positioning for five people, it just becomes a much bigger thing than if it's just one person. Right, like 200 bucks to pop over to LA or whatever. For one person, no big deal. But when there's five of you, that's $1,000, you know which. I don't want to pay so, and we don't have our companion passes next year, so we can't use those to fly on southwest. So I needed to find a solution that would work for a bigger family. I did a ton of searches. I used google flights to try and understand what options flew direct, on what airlines. I checked frontier, I checked spirit. Um, the issue with those which those are the worst like we hate Frontier with a passion, um.

Raya:

But the issue there is once you add on the bag fees, even for a carry-on size, it makes it the same as a regular flight. But then I figured it out at least one way and we are going to use Alaska Airlines to position. My intention was to use it both ways but as of this morning there's been a wrench in that plan. We'll talk about that in a minute. But Alaska uses a distance based award chart to determine the cost of award flights and so within the US, flights under 700 miles start at 4,500 miles one way. So when I was looking, flights from Phoenix to San Francisco and flights from LAX to Phoenix were 4,500 points a person and $5.60 in taxes, I think. So I figured this out a few days before the announcement for the Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines merger was made. So my initial plan was to open an Alaska business card and earn the points we needed and use those points to reposition both ways, because at 4,500 points a person it's literally 22,500 points total one way for our whole family, plus like $28 or something. But now that I can transfer American Express to Hawaiian and then Hawaiian to Alaska, that is what I've done to book at least one of one way positioning flights. So here's our overall plan for now and this is where the wrench comes in and we'll talk about that. We're flying phoenix to san francisco on alaska using points already booked it. We're staying overnight in san francisco at the hyatt right by the airport. We'll use points for that and the cost to reposition was 22 500500 miles and $28 in taxes and fees.

Raya:

The next day we fly out on Japan Airlines, booked using American Airlines miles, nonstop to Haneda. That cost us 175,000 AA miles and $28 for taxes and fees. On the way back we fly from Narita, which is there's two main airports in Tokyo, so we fly into one and out of a different one. So on the way we fly back from Narita nonstop to LAX on Singapore Airlines, that cost us 192,500 American Express points, which was $38,500 per person, and we paid $223.54 in taxes and fees total for all five of us. Then we will land in LAX and hopefully get on a plane to Phoenix within a couple of hours. However, when I signed in today to book that second positioning flight on Alaska Airlines, there is no economy availability at all period and there's only like two flights to choose from. So there's not even a lot of flights.

Duane:

So we got to fly first class no.

Raya:

I mean, I considered it, but it's literally an hour flight. Like what a waste. It's 9,000 miles per person for first class, which is 40, I just think like it's a waste so TBD on how we're going to get back.

Raya:

I think my plan is to continue checking the Alaska website. I also did look up United and we could book on United for like 11,000 miles a person, which isn't terrible. We have some United miles from when I, panic, opened a United business credit card for you when I thought we were going to try to go to Yellowstone and we were going to have to fly into Montana and then we didn't end up doing that. So I was kind of saving those points for that, but we could use them for this. But I think I also tried to look on like Southwest, but Southwest the calendar isn't open that far out. So I think the one thing that I've learned is we have a lot of time and I'm not going to rush it, because when I rush it something always pops up that would have been better, like in a month or two, you know yeah so I'm not gonna force it, I'm just gonna wait and kind of see what happens.

Raya:

But all in all, so far the total out-of-pocket cost for our family of five to fly to Japan in economy is $307.54.

Duane:

Which is fantastic.

Raya:

It's fantastic. And let me add that that includes what I'm assuming is going to be $28 in taxes and fees for a positioning flight back from LAX to Phoenix, because I don't see us paying cash for those flights. We are going to use points in some way and the taxes and fees on a points flight should be $5.60 a person. So that includes what I'm assuming is $28 for that second positioning flight. So yeah, $307. For a family of five, for a family of five and a good amount of points. I mean whatever $175,000 plus $192,500 is. I don't know. I don't know what the math is. As for hotels on the trip, we're staying in only Hyatt's. Our first positioning flight is Friday. Like I mentioned, we don't fly out to Japan until Saturday, so we're going to stay at a Hyatt by the airport. Then the day we land, we check into the Grand Hyatt Tokyo for just one night.

Duane:

It's because we had to book a day early, right?

Raya:

Yeah, we were yeah when I I booked the hotels first and then the flights later, because hotel availability opens first, and so I had originally booked basically hotels starting Monday, but then we were able to get a flight we needed on Saturday, which means we arrive Sunday, so we need a flight for Sunday. I mean a hotel for Sunday. So we decided we'll do the Grand Hyatt for one night and all the Hyatts that I'm going to mention. We have two rooms booked in each hotel because there's five of us. Then we're going to move to the Hyatt Centric Ginza for four nights Again, two rooms booked on points. Then these are all in tokyo. Then we're gonna take a shinkansen, is that how you say?

Duane:

it maybe.

Raya:

Yeah, I just call it bullet train we're gonna take the bullet train from tokyo to kyoto and we're gonna stay in kyoto for five nights and we're gonna stay at the hyatt Place Kyoto and we are actually paying cash for two rooms there, just because it was fairly inexpensive and it didn't seem the best use of points to book, and so, yes, we're using cash for that, and then we will take the train back to Tokyo and we're going to stay at the Hyatt House Tokyo, shibuya Shibuya Sounds fun to say, am I saying it right?

Raya:

Shibuya. Yeah, for four more nights, I think, also booked using points, two rooms each. We may finagle a few different changes to the hotels at the end of the trip, because we do want to go to Tokyo Disney and there is a couple of hotels that are closer to Disney that it might make more sense for us to stay at. But as of now, that's what we have booked. The other thing is I am going to try to use some free night certificates the category one through four free night certificates that I got from opening the hyatt personal card. In the last couple months they had a new promotion and the hyatt house tokyo shibuya is a category four, so my intention is to use some of those nights that I got and apply it towards that stay and get my points back.

Duane:

So and I just want to add we will be globalist while we're there, yes, so I'm excited for that yes, we're actually like we should.

Raya:

I'm waiting for the nights to post, but we're at 55 and we have five more to go and we've earned them. They just haven't posted yet because it's from credit card spend and so I'm just like waiting for that to happen and I think it might happen tomorrow, which is Monday, which is when this podcast will air. So TBD. But the reason we're prioritizing Hyatt is because of the globalist status and we're hoping that will save us a big chunk of money, because we have because of the globalist status and we're hoping that will save us a big chunk of money, because we have like 30 nights booked at Hyatt's next year, which is a lot.

Duane:

And maybe it's even more.

Raya:

I'm sure it'll be more so anyways, that is all the details on how we booked our trip to Japan. If you have questions, please find us on Instagram at TravelParty5. Do you have anything to add?

Duane:

No, I'm just super excited for that trip.

Raya:

I know Kind of the downside about booking so far out is it's so exciting to book it, but it's so far away. It's like oh my gosh, we're not going until September. I'm super excited too, I. It's so far away it's like oh my gosh, we're not going until September. So I'm super excited too. I've never been to Japan. Our kids are excited which our kids don't get super excited about a lot of trips. They're going to go to Paris and they're not excited.

Duane:

They don't know any better.

Raya:

I know, but yes, I'm super excited for Japan. We've been watching a bunch of YouTube videos about, you know, traveling to Japan and the food and I'm just really excited for the sushi, the noodles. It's going to be great.

Duane:

Yeah, I got a buddy who's still stationed there that's going to try and get us on the base that I grew up on. I'm excited to show you and the kids where that's at.

Raya:

Yeah, I think that'll be fun.

Duane:

My old stomping grounds.

Raya:

Yeah, and what are like. What are you most excited for about Japan Besides that Food?

Duane:

The food, yeah, the 7-Eleven food, 7-eleven food, any of the convenience store foods.

Raya:

ramen like real ramen obviously we will do probably several podcast episodes about that trip once it happens, but I apologize that you'll have to wait approximately 10 months, as do we, so, um, anyways, if you have questions about booking to japan again, find us on instagram at travel party of five. Give us a follow. Um, maybe I'll make a reel about how I booked it. Uh, if people like short form content, I don't know, but otherwise we will catch you on the next episode and thank you so much for listening. Leave us a review if you like our podcast. Thank you.

Duane:

Thank you, have a good one.