How-to: Barebones trip to Japan on Points

 Warning: This post advocates the use of multiple credit cards. Credit cards can be dangerous and expensive if you spend money that you don't have. If you think you might spend money you don't have, stop reading. All of my advice assumes that at minimum, you set up and verify that autopay works for the full statement balance before the due date!

If a $15 bowl of seafood and rice can't convince you to make the trip, I'm not sure what to tell you.

So you want to go to Japan, but you're not looking for a comfortable flight or fancy hotels, you just want to get there and eat your way around Tokyo. Let's see what we can do with two credit card bonuses and a bank account bonus.

First you're gonna want to do your homework for the flights by seeing what's available from your home airport, scroll to the bottom of this post for how I do it from my home airport of GEG, in this example I'm using Delta.

The Accounts

Card 1: American Express Delta Gold - (Referral link) - 80,000 Delta SkyMiles after spending $3000 in your first 3 months of being a cardmember. Annual fee waived for your first year, $150/yr thereafter. (You can cancel the card after the annual fee posts next year and the annual fee should get refunded as long as you cancel it within 30 days.) - Make sure to apply with your existing Delta member number if you have one. The card earns 1x per dollar spent on general purchases, but 2x on dining and groceries, so you should end up with at minimum 3000 miles from spending, but 3500 isn't unreasonable if $500 of that $3000 is spent on groceries. So that's 83500 Delta Skymiles.

Card 2: CapitalOne Venture - (Referral Link) - 75,000 CapitalOne Miles after spending $5000 in the first 3 months of being a cardmember. $95 annual fee NOT waived the first year. This card earns 2 points per dollar everywhere so that's 85,000 CapitalOne miles after the spend requirement is met.

Bank Account Bonus: US Bank - $450 for having direct deposits totaling $8000 over the next 90 days
https://www.usbank.com/splash/checking/2025-all-market-checking-offer.html

Open a Schwab Investor Checking account. This is so you can use ATMs worldwide without foreign transaction fees. ATM fees also get refunded worldwide.

Create an account at https://www.choicehotels.com/ for when you transfer your CapitalOne points over to maximize them on your hotel.

The Flights

Delta.com - search one-way for your home airport to HND. Look at flexible dates, in my case, I found this itinerary on August 16 for 41600 miles plus $6.

For the return, I just added 10 days and found the return itinerary with a slightly longer layover in Seattle for 36500, plus about $50 but the 41600 mile ticket is typical.

So 41600*2 is 83200. You should have points left over after booking your Delta flights.

The Hotel:

Transfer 80000 of your CapitalOne points to your Choice Hotels account.

Search for 8 nights in Tokyo. The Comfort Hotel Tokyo Kanda should show up for 10,000 points per night, so book it with your 80,0000 CapitalOne points. You have 5000 left, but you booked your flight with the CapitalOne card, so you can use their purchase eraser on your CapitalOne account to erase the $50 in taxes that you paid for that return flight on Delta.

Congrats, you've booked your trip to Japan, now that you've arrived head over to the first ATM you see and take out 10,000 yen with your Schwab debit card, that's $67 today.

Now follow signs the rest of the way to the Haneda Airport Terminal 3 station. Near the ticket gate, there should be a ticket machine to buy your SUICA card. Follow the English prompts to preload it with 4000 Yen.

Now follow the Google Maps directions to your hotel. For enhanced spatial awareness, wear your backpack on the front of your body while riding the train if you are unable to sit down.

Here's how you've spent your $450 so far:

-95 CapitalOne Annual Fee
-6 Taxes on your flight to Japan
-5 Transit to Hotel

You have $344 left that you have to stretch for the next 8 nights. $344/8 leaves you with $43 per day. Doesn't sound like much, does it?

It's doable.

To give you an idea of how affordable it can be to eat in Japan, this simple meal of beef, rice, egg, and miso from the chain, Yoshinoya, set me back 660+217 Yen. I'll round that up to $6 USD. (I think there was also a small serving of Kimchi, not pictured)

Or how about this curry plate from the chain, Coco Ichibanya including a creamy crab croquette, some rice, and some deep fried oysters was about $7. I ordered extra spicy so I ended up drinking more than one $4 beer.

That's two meals for under $20 total. The hotel includes free breakfast. So you have $24 for coffee, beer, transit, and snacks. Tap water in Japan is safe to drink.

Snacks throughout the day can be taken care of at supermarkets and convenience stores. A pretty decently sized piece of boneless deep fried chicken will set you back about $1 at Family Mart (Famichiki) or 7 Eleven (Nanachiki). An onigiri rice ball is about $0.75 at the convenience stores. A sports drink such as Aquarius is about $0.75 at the convenience store. Coffee about $2

Transit is about $2.50 for a round trip between Kanda Station and Shinjuku Station. At Shinjuku station, you can spend hours exploring the station on its own, or go up to the surface and head over to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building to get a view of the city from the observatory for $0. Suica Penguin Square, also $0 has a great view of the train tracks. 

There's so much to see and do for free in this beautiful city that although it can be hard to resist spending more, it's possible to complete your trip without your savings account even knowing it happened.

More on the flights:

You're going to want to first check which airline program is a good fit for you. Get on the major airlines' websites and do a one-way search for your home airport to TYO. At time of writing this I'm looking about 11 months out around August 21, 2026.

AA.com: GEG-TYO is 35k American Airlines Miles + $5.60 (Long flight usually on Japan Airlines) - However there's, weird availability. Sometimes it's an 18 hours of travel, sometimes it's 13 hours of travel, and sometimes it gets pushed to 30+ hours for some reason. The good redemptions are there, but availability is extremely volatile, at least from my home airport.
Citi American Airlines, 80k after spending $3k

AlaskaAir.com: GEG-SEA-NRT(14hr) - 37.5k Alaska Miles with the long flight also on Japan Airlines. You can also spend 35k Alaska miles for GEG-SEA-NRT (14hr) with the long flight on Hawaiian.
Bank of America Alaska Airlines 85k for spending $4k ($95 annual fee not waived)

Delta.com: GEG-SEA-HND (13hr) is 32k Delta Miles for Basic Economy or 44k for Main Classic. But know that Delta Amex Gold holders get a 15% discount on mileage redemptions, making that 27200 for basic economy or 37400 for Main Classic.
 American Express Delta Gold - (Referral link) - 80,000 Delta SkyMiles after spending $3000

United.com: Even more volatile than American Airlines. Sometimes there's a good deal on an ANA ticket, but usually not. I basically use my United miles for domestic flights anymore, but there are occasional deals.