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Context
My wife turns 40 this month, and Japan has been her bucket list destination since her childhood, when her family used to host Japanese students. During the pandemic I stumbled across the sub-world of reward flights, so in 2020 I decided to set the goal of stacking up enough points to take our family of five (kids currently aged 11, 8 and 8) to Japan in 2025. My wife and I both work for charities, so don’t have huge salaries. Our family holidays usually consist of caravanning, with an occasional trip to France. The youngest two (twins) hadn’t actually flown before this trip.Booking reward flights
With the kids being in school, my aim was to book the holiday as closely aligned with the Easter holidays as possible. Flights to Tokyo are obviously in high demand at this time of the year, so I started the 1am booking attempts at T-355 a few days out from the beginning of the holidays. I missed out several days in a row, but found decent availability on Iberia from MAD-NAR that worked, meaning the kids would miss one day of school at the end of term. I booked 5 tickets in economy for 119k points (using one CV from the free BA card) and £361 taxes. For the return flight we started trying to book at 1am T-355 attempting to return a couple of days before the end of the Easter holidays. We missed out several days in a row and started to think we’d be missing too much school and would need to cancel the outbound tickets. We agreed to have one last attempt and managed to get them, meaning the kids would miss 3 additional days post-Easter (and only 4 in total, avoiding us an absence fine!). The return journey was booked HND-LHR-MAN (we are based up North) and cost 175k avios and £500 taxes.The MAD option
I then paid £366 for Iberia flights from MAN-MAD, re-positioning us 24 hours ahead of our MAD-NAR flight. For us, flying from Madrid was out of necessity due to reward seat availability. Given the extra night in a hotel, the (large) taxi to/from the hotel and extra couple of meals in Madrid, this was definitely a costlier option (though Tesco vouchers paid for most of the hotel via hotels.com). Iberia then decided to change their scheduling too, with the mid-morning flight MAD-MAN being switched to 7.30pm. This wasn’t going to work for us – we needed the kids to be shifting sleep the opposite direction pre-Japan timezone, so we took the offer of switching to earlier flights MAN-LHR then LHR-MAD.Japan
Our overall experience of Japan was very, very positive. We all loved it – the kids, myself and most importantly, my wife! As you’ll see below, we enjoyed some locations more than others, but we loved the food, the culture, the cleanliness, the transport, the konbinis, the scenery and pretty much everything else. If it wasn’t for the distance and cost, we’d definitely go again.Narita
We landed around 9.30am in NAR and it took at least an hour to clear immigration. We wanted to start our trip in Osaka, but didn’t want to risk a same-day connection (it would also have been very tiring for the kids) so we booked one night at the Tobu Airport Hotel (cash), used the free shuttle to drop our bags early and then headed for the very beautiful Narita town. It’s well worth a visit for a wander up and down the main street. Lot’s of food to try and trinket shops to browse. It feels a world away from Tokyo. We were then up early the next morning for an 8am flight to Osaka. We booked these on Peach, using cash.Osaka
This was our favourite big city that we visited – lively, fun, relaxed, amazing food. We flex into KIX and got a train to Namba, dropping our bags at a coin locker before exploring the local area. We’d booked an apartment (called Crice Hotel, but definitely not a hotel) for 4 nights through Avios Hotels, using 72k avios. The apartment was very spacious and comfortable and was fine in terms of location. One snag we hit was that there’s no way of messaging the owner directly (necessary for details of how to get in) via avios hotels, so I had to the find the same place on AirBnB and contact through that instead. Using Osaka as a base, we did a 1 day trip to Kyoto. This included a couple of hours at the Nintendo Museum (great fun), lunch at Steak Otsuka (courtesy of Amex Platinum, booked via Pocket Concierge – delicious wagyu steak) and exploring Arashiyama (overrated and over-busy) and then a sunset walk up to Kiyomizu dera (busy but a much more pleasant atmosphere). We also did a 1 day trip to Himeji castle. We didn’t go inside, but it was truly magnificent in peak sakura season.Nagoya
While not top of most people’s lists, we decided to spend 2 nights here exploring the food scene and castle. The castle, undergoing renovations so closed to visitors internally, worked really well – free for kids on a weekend and even a free ninja & samurai show. Osu shopping street was fun to wander around. 1400 shops in close proximity means you can find anything and everything there. We enjoyed the city (and the food – chicken wings and tonkatsu curry) but probably wouldn’t visit again. We stayed at the Green Rich Hotel (cash). It was okay – quite business-styled, but comfortable. The onsen in the basement was enjoyable.Takayama
After picking up our hire car (we used Toyota Rental for convenience and the cheapest option for one-way rental), we drove to Takayama, stopping at Magome for a wander up through the post town main street. Even on a wet day, this was a real treat. We found a lovely one-woman shop selling fresh bao buns and free Japanese tea, and a guy running a shop with beautiful handmade wooden items. In Takayama we stayed for 2 nights just outside the town in a very odd house called the Pop Culture House. It looks like it was painted bright pink by a child. We paid cash (used avios hotels again and earned 6k avios). Accidentally, we’d timed our trip with their Spring Festival – the Sanno Matsuri – so there were 12 very ornate festival floats paraded by people dressed in traditional attire on both days were were there. We loved everything about this town – very traditional and beautiful, great food (Hida beef, Takayama ramen) and sake. We’d definitely go back here again. We did a short trip out to see Shirakawa-go – interesting for a quick visit but pretty bleak up in the mountains at this time of year. I’d say it would be more beautiful during winter snow or the summer. Due to poor visibility, we cancelled a planned day trip into the Alps proper and opted for a day in Kanazawa. However, when we got there it was torrential rain, so after a brief wander around the disappointing Omicho market, we bailed and drove back to Takayama for more wandering and ramen!Oshino
From there, we drove to spend 2 nights at an AirBnb (cash) in Oshino, near Fuji-san. Our drive took us through heavy (and beautiful) snowfall in the Alps, and via a brief stop at Matsumoto castle. Fuji is just beautiful – hard to describe how impactful it is in the landscape from the moment you spot it 50 miles out! We stayed a few minutes walk from Oshino Hakkai (beautiful first thing on a morning before the hoards of buses arrive). Again, we coincided this trip with peak sakura, providing some amazing photo opportunities of fuji and blossom. On our one full day there, we got up super early to see the sunrise then beat the buses and trains full of tourists to Arakurayama Sengen Park – 650 cherry trees with a pagoda providing an amazing view of Fuji. We then drove all the way round Fuji, stopping for the afternoon at Makaino Farm Resort – a really great place for kids to run around, meet some animals and take comedy photos of Fuji with over-sized props.Tokyo
We ended our trip with 5 nights in Tokyo – staying at Playsis East Hotel (cash plus some tesco clubcard vouchers) in the Asakusa/Sumida area. The hotel was okay – clean and reasonably quiet. It had a rooftop deck with views of the Skytree on one side and the golden turd on the other. To be totally honest, while we enjoyed seeing the famous sights (Shibuya crossing, Meiji Jingu, Senso-ji etc) we found Tokyo to be just too busy and crowded for us. I appreciate that being tourists ourselves means we’re part of the problem, but most of the main sites are horrendously crowded. Taking the subway with young ones wasn’t always fun – sometimes being very, very squashed. Having said that, the kids loved the plethora of Pokemon stores. And we all loved TeamLabs Borderless. I’d recommend that to anyone going to Tokyo – well worth the entry price.Lounges
One perk of having Amex Plat was the lounge access. None of us had ever used an airport lounge before, so we enjoyed trying to get into as many as we could. With there being 5 of us, we had to pay for one of the kids to be a guest each time we all went in, so sometimes we’d send two people in for free to scope things out. Here are my very brief reviews (as a first timer).
Escape Lounge – MAN – pretty dirty and busy. The sign outside said it was full (it wasn’t), but they let us in. Basic breakfast stuff and pretty busy with weirdos drinking unlimited beer at 10am – I’ve never understood this and never will!
Neptuno Lounge – MAD – lovely atmosphere but limited food options. This was spacious, beautiful and really quiet. Great views of a runway. The food was nice, just slightly surprising to have no hot food options. Still, the cold buffet was great.
Plaza Premium – LHR – pretty rubbish food offering. Our scoping party snaffled a couple of slices of pizza and we chose not to all go in.
Sky Lounge South – HND – average – a dark, windowless room with a basic food offering.BA vs Iberia
It was interesting to compare the two airlines on our two longer flights. For what it’s worth… flying economy on both…
Iberia – food was better, cabin was too warm.
BA – food was awful, but more leg room, cabin was too cold.Thanks for the report. We visited Japan last November / December and had an incredible time – your trip report is making me want to go back!
I agree on Tokyo – I found it a little bit too busy for me, but we also chose to stay in Shibuya so that was probably an own-goal. We enjoyed Kyoto much more.
Interesting that you chose to fly from Tokyo to Osaka instead of taking the train – I’d have thought it might overall take longer. Did you consider the train? I found the Tokaido Shinkansen line to be fantastic when we used it between Tokyo and Kyoto.
How was driving in Japan? I think I’d have been a little nervous to do it, but perhaps outside of the larger cities it would be fine and maybe a little easier to access some of the more remote areas.
Sounds like you had a fantastic time and you’ve given me some thoughts for our next trip, whenever that may be!
Great report and a great example of how to hit that bucket list with lots of forward planning and points collecting.
Excellent report – gives me some ideas for planning our trip next year.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Interesting that you chose to fly from Tokyo to Osaka instead of taking the train – I’d have thought it might overall take longer. Did you consider the train? I found the Tokaido Shinkansen line to be fantastic when we used it between Tokyo and Kyoto.
How was driving in Japan? I think I’d have been a little nervous to do it, but perhaps outside of the larger cities it would be fine and maybe a little easier to access some of the more remote areas.
The short flight seemed to make sense for us due to a) it was cheaper than the shinkansen and b) we’d have had to travel from Narita airport into Tokyo Station for the shinkansen – we just got the 5 min free shuttle bus back to the airport the next day.
In terms of driving – it was an absolute breeze. I found it easier than driving in France (maybe due to driving on the left). We just used Google maps all the time and it directed us perfectly. Most signs have English on them too, so we never felt too overwhelmed.
Good report, thanks.
Think I’ll go and write some observations about a few things over on the master thread later.
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