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Travel

Japan for less then $1000

It’s alway been a dream of mine to go to Japan but I’m not a fan of spending money. I hear Japan is expensive. I want to spend less than $1000 out of pocket for a two week trip.

How I plan to do this, three words, credit card points. Heres a breakdown of my points at the time of writing.

  • Chase – 112,000
  • Amex – 60,000
  • Marriott – 13,000

Flights look to be about $800, since I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve I get 1.5 points per cent on travel, so ~52,000 points for the plane ticket. I also looked into transferring my points to an airline and I don’t get any more bang for the buck that way.

So If I use my chase point to get the flight that leaves the hotel. I need to think about the itinerary and what I want to see before I can make a decision on the hotel. However if I transfer all my points from remaining Chase and Amex to Marriott I’ll have 110,000. That will get me nowhere. Marriotts are really expensive in Japan.

Let’s look at booking the hotel through Amex. With my Amex points I can stay at trip adviser 4 star hotel for 5 nights in Tokyo. 5 nights down 9 to go. Ok, with my remaining Chase points I do 4 nights in Kyoto, 2 nights in Hiroshima, and 2 nights in Osaka.

Ok that just leaves when transportation between those cities, food, and things when I’m there which should come in under $1000. So I guess I’m going to Japan.