Ever dream of going to Japan, not just once, but every year. Me too. I'm John. And that dream became my mission, which is why I started rewarding routes. A podcast about making Japan travel possible. Year after year, I learned how to leverage credit cards to earn points and miles turning everyday spending into flights and hotel stays across Japan.

Each episode I'll share what I've learned from booking award travel to building meaningful itineraries and deep diving into regions, traditions, and experiences that make this country so special. Let's build your rewarding route one trip at a time. Welcome back to another episode of Rewarding Routes, and I'm so excited to talk about this episode because this is a trip we took about three months ago, and it was all covered, meaning the flights in the hotels were completely covered by points and miles.

So as you read in the title, I turned $15,880 worth of flights in hotels, and I only paid $221 out of pocket. So that kind of shows you the power of points and miles, and I'm going be going over all my redemptions and walking you through our trip step by step and how I did things and what cards I use for certain things, just so you can get a better understanding of how this all works.

So if you haven't listened to the episodes before, , and you're new here. And you're new to Points of Miles, I, I recommend going back just to get a basic understanding of what Points of Miles are, what are some mistakes I made in the past and what you can learn from them. But this basically brings all those episodes together and you're gonna see an example of how.

Powerful points of miles are, and how I'm able to do this and visit Japan every year and go beyond that and visit other places. In this trip, we visited South Korea, so you're gonna be able to see how powerful points of miles are when you take all those basic understandings and you're gonna see how I.

Redeem those points , and the cards that I used and my wife used and we're just gonna get into it. It's, this is gonna be a great episode. So we did this trip at the end of April and we live in Orlando, Florida. And for the flight that I found, which was San Francisco, to which is, . In South Korea where Seoul is, I believe it's like an hour out from Seoul.

It's quite a far airports, one of those airports that's says it's Seoul, but it's like really far out from it. Same thing with nata. , NATA is quite far from Tokyo and that's why you wanna fly into Haida, but sometimes , you don't get that option. You just kind of have to go with it. 'cause like you get the best price or you get the best redemption.

So in this case, the. I had found a really good flight from San Francisco to EO and it was with Korean Air. So how I booked this flight is I have my Venture X Card, my Capital One Venture X Card. That card earns two points per dollar on everything you spend. So it's a really good catchall card. You can just probably use it for most of your expenses 'cause it gives you two points per dollar spent.

I had a lot of these venture miles. I hit the signup bonus. I had some referrals. I was lucky to get, , I did some good spending on it. I mean, it was my catchall card for, for a while. So I had a lot of points. I had around over 200,000 points on this card. So I knew I wanted to use that card. The problem was, Korean Air isn't a travel partner with any bank, so you can't just take your venture miles and transfer it over to Korean Air.

But what Korean Air is, is a partner with Virgin Atlantic, and this is what I mean from my previous episodes when I was talking about transfer partners. There are alliances and there are partnerships. So when you find a partnership, I'm able to use my venture miles to go on Virgin Atlantic and on Virgin Atlantic.

I can see Korean air flights, and they're bookable with points. So I was able to find this deal. I transferred over 62,000 venture miles for two one ways from San Francisco to in Soul. So this shows you the power of alliances and partnerships because. You'll find that there are airlines that just don't have any banks associated as a travel partner.

So the way to get on those flights are through alliances and partnerships. So in this case, Virgin was a partner with Korean Air.

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, I sent my points over to Virgin Red.

Then I booked the Korean Air flight through Virgin. It was 62,000 points. All I paid was $62 in taxes and fees, and the cash value of this flight would've been $1,452 for two one ways in economy.

Yeah. By the way, this was an economy flight. Wasn't a business class or preferred economy? Just regular economy. And it was a great experience. Highly recommend. So now that I got my flight from San Francisco to Encon. We live in Orlando, Florida. So you're probably wondering why did I book it that way? Why didn't you book it from Orlando to connect to San Francisco to connect in Seoul?

Well, you won't get the best value that way. And flights are a bit more complicated when it comes to a route that long. So what I like to do, and you'll hear this a lot in the points in Miles Hobby, are positioning flights. So I positioned . Myself and my wife from Orlando, Florida to San Francisco.

I used Southwest to position our way over and I took it a step further. I like to be comfortable and I don't like to travel all in one go, especially that far. I. We stayed one night at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, which is about a 12 minute shuttle ride from the airport, and that was 15,000 Chase ultimate reward points that I transferred over to Hyatt to book that hotel.

So from Orlando, Florida to San Francisco, it was about 13,180. Rapid rewards each and we both paid $5 and 60 cents. So 1120. For the most of us combined. So to combine the numbers, we used 26,360 rapid reward points. We paid $11 and 20 cents, and this got us from Orlando, Florida to San Francisco, and the cash value was

$358. So, especially when you're living on the East coast like I am all the way in Florida, , when you're going to Japan from the east coast of anywhere in the US or maybe you don't live near a major airport or anything, you're gonna want to look into these positioning flights. 'cause these positioning flights are gonna get you to that airport that has that good deal.

Through points to get you to the destination or to get you to Japan or to any other country around Japan. So you're gonna find great value , in positioning. It can also help break up your trip. I know it takes a little bit away from your trip, but it makes it comfortable for us to fly from Orlando to San Francisco.

We have time to . Get to the hotel, have something to eat, relax a little bit, and prepare ourselves for , about a 14 hour flight the next day. So that's what , we ended up doing. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, then in the next morning we took our flight from San Francisco to Seoul on Korean Air, which we booked via Virgin Atlantic with the Capital One Venture X.

This flight was an economy and we really enjoyed it. We really enjoyed Korean air. The service was fantastic. The flight was half empty, so we had the whole road to ourselves and the bim bi bop was fantastic. It's a Korean rice dish. Yeah, everything about this fight was fantastic and I couldn't recommend highly enough really, really, really good airline. So now we're in Seoul and the hotel we booked was the Seoul Gangnam Gang's, more of a high-end area of Seoul, , known for its highend brands and fashion.

It was a , very nice area , and we stayed four nights. So at the. For the four nights, we spent 129,000 Chase ultimate rewards. The cash value for the four nights would've been $3,162, so. We did pretty good. , The hotel was beautiful, the service was amazing. As soon as you walk through the doors, you're greeted and you're taken care of.

They gave us some tea, some biscuits. They were all so polite and, and it was a really beautiful hotel. Really nice. And the location's actually pretty decent because right underneath the hotel, we can take an elevator down below and the train station was there. And you can take the subway straight into the, uh, main part of Seoul.

So for the Chase Ultimate reward and us spending 129,000 for this four night stay, we use several of the Chase cards. So we have, I have the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Chase Freedom Flex and the Unlimited. Cassandra also has the Freedom Flex and Unlimited. We do have a few of the business cards by Chase.

So we have the Chase Inc. Preferred. Which I have. I also have the Ink Unlimited, and Cassandra has the Ink Cash and the Ink Unlimited by Chase. So we had quite a few Chase cards for this trip and I know I haven't talked about business cards yet, but business cards are a strategy if you want to take your points in Miles knowledge to the next level.

And that's something we'll get more into later on. This is just an example and, and don't feel overwhelmed. I've been doing this just for about four or five years now, so I've gotten more comfortable opening up cards and more comfortable with business cards, which is now a strategy of ours.

So don't let it, don't let it overwhelm me too much. We're gonna get into this and, and I'm gonna get into more, , future episodes , of how to get these cards. And book these amazing trips that I'm going over right now. We also took advantage of the Player two system, which was me referring my wife, Cassandra and Cassandra referring me for these Chase cards to bump up our referral points even more on top of the signup bonuses we were receiving when we were spending on these cards and hitting that minimum spend.

So. As you can see, these chase points started to really rack up in time. I believe we accumulated somewhere around the 400 to 500,000 points for Chase Ultimate Rewards. During this time. This was the year before, so we were working on these cards, uh, kind of in the middle of 2023 into 2024, which then our trip was in 2025.

The Andaz Soul Gangnam was a fantastic stay. It was actually on one of the nights, it was on my wife's birthday. I had wrote a message to the Andaz before our arrival, just mentioning it was her birthday. We were excited to come. I know a lot of people, or some people mention, , writing out to the hotels that you're staying at during these trips to see if there's a special occasion maybe they can cater to.

And for this instance, this was my wife's birthday. And they actually had a little piece of cake waiting for her when we checked into our hotel. So it was really nice, a really nice touch. You can actually see a lot of these stories and, , more of my trip on my Instagram. I'll link the Instagram below so you can look at kind of what I've , posted.

They're in my story highlights so you can. See more in depth of that trip , and how exciting that trip was. It was a, a really amazing time out in, uh, South Korea and I, I, we had a blast. We ate so much food and we just experienced so much and so many beautiful places and palaces. We were even able to book , a baking class on Airbnb experiences, , with a local in Suan and Suan iss about a 45 minute.

Train ride away from Seoul going south, but Suan was a , very charming area. , Also recommend Suan if you can. You might have seen some social media posts about the, , Starfield libraries. There's one in Seoul and there's also another one in Suan. They're really beautifully laid out with so many books.

It's just the way they did. It all looks fantastic. If you're really into libraries or in, really into books. Go ahead and look at the Starfield libraries out there in South Korea. They are quite amazing and quite epic. So moving on from Seoul, we took the KTX high-speed train over from Seoul to Busan.

We paid cash for, it was around, I believe, 80. Three or $85 for the both of us. One way it was about two and a half hours. So really quick, really convenient. , we took a taxi from our hotel and gun them, and we went over to Soul Station, took the KTX and we were on our way to Buson.

Now in Busan, we stayed at the Park Hyatt at Busan for two nights., I actually wanted to stay here a little bit longer, but the Park Hyatt at Busan, the availability was really tight , whenever I put more than two days, it wouldn't give me any availability. So the two nights I found I was lucky enough to find, and that cost us 50,000 points for the two nights.

An average night there would be 2 39 a night. So the two nights combined would've been $476. Now, this is an example of where cash can make sense to book instead of using points, but I decided to use points I didn't want to spend, , cash on it. But as you can see, and I've talked about before, 50,000 chase points normally is.

Equivalent to $500 and the two nights would've cost 4 76, I believe this was without the fee, so it would've been over a little over 500. But you can make that choice if you wanted to book it cash or if you wanted to save those points for something else, and something else that can be of a higher value redemption.

So that's up to you. For us, it made sense just to book it with points because. We didn't want to pay cash. We wanted to try to do everything with points on the strip. With that said, this hotel was a fantastic stay. I will say that the location's a bit tricky because basically where it's at, you have to take the bus or a taxi.

, There's no like fast public transportation to get there in and. But that was fine. We took the bus and then sometimes we took some taxis if we needed to get somewhere quicker. So this was my first ever park Hyatt. I know Park Hyatts have a high reputation of being amazing all over the world, and having to experience it in Busan was a real treat for us.

So I was very fortunate that we were able to stay there at least two nights. It would've been nice to stay there and experience Mosan a little bit longer, but this is. All , we had the opportunity for and we took it and we were glad we had that opportunity. And sometimes it's like that, sometimes the availability for a place you wanna stay just isn't there and you have to work around it.

So if there is a property you wanna stay at and you know it's a very high end property or very busy one that you find very limited availability for. , Definitely book it in advance. All these things were booked well in advance. , I think this bosan one was maybe nine months. So even with nine months in advance, I was only able to find two days at the park high at Bosan.

So just plan accordingly and plan ahead and you'll be just fine. Rusan was another incredible destination and a very nice city. A very big city with a coastal vibe to it. It's really unique and , it's a place worth visiting. , When visiting South Korea. Say you're going to Seoul, I would definitely put Busan on the list.

We are able to see some beautiful temples right on the coastline. We went out to HIE Blue Line Park, which is, if you type in or Google Busan, you might see these really colorful capsules that. That go on a line. Well, we didn't do those capsules, but we did the train, which was the blue line right underneath, and it had a various amount of stops and it was a nice way to go along the coastline and see , the skyline of bussan in the back.

And it was a great trip. Our last night there, we went to a place called Spa Land. And by this time, you know, doing Seoul and then , a bit of Busan, it's good, to find moments in your trip to relax and really take back and, and relax and let your body rest.

So in spa Land, which spa culture , in Korea is , very big, . It was this big facility with different rooms, and you had some that were, like saunas and others that were just more of relaxation with some music and you had outdoor hot pools that you could put your feet in and soak in, and then you had like beds inside that you could just rest on.

That was a really good experience. I think it was only $18 for the both of us for four hours. A really good way to reset. , And let your body relax on trips like this, where you're walking consistently and you're going here and there. So we found this moment to be really good for us, and fall in was a really good way for us to end our trip in Bussan.

And now we're making our way over to Japan. So from Busan over to Tokyo, we went from the Busan airport over to Narita. This was. Normally I would like to go into Heida, but most times you'll find really good redemptions going to nata. NATA is a bit further, it's over in Chiba. It's about an hour plus out from Tokyo via train, and Heida is around 15, 20 minutes to Central Tokyo.

So quite the difference there. But from Busan to nata, I went ahead and did the same thing we did for our flights. Going from San Francisco to Seoul, which was I redeemed 14,000 venture miles with the Capital One Venture X Card. I booked this on Virgin Atlantic and the flight was with Korean Air. So once again, same kind of redemption as the flight that took us from San Francisco over to Seoul.

, It was 14,000 for the both of us in economy. All we paid was $28 and 20 cents in tax. And the flight redemption cash value would've been $295. So once we landed in Narita, we took a shuttle bus, which I booked on Klu. Klu is a great website for finding activities and transportation really good rates, , in Japan.

So if you're ever wondering how to book, , say for example you're looking for shuttles from airports to. Certain areas in Tokyo or maybe in Kyoto or Osaka. You can look at Kluk. Klu also has those, , Chicon send passes. You can book , Tokyo, Disneyland, or , Disney C Passes on Klu, .

The first time we used Klu was in our trip in 2023 and we bought passes for Universal Studios, Japan. So definitely check out Klu. Klu is really helpful, really convenient. It has an app you can mess with it. See what kind of, , activities and things can be booked on it. We booked Osaka Castle with Klu. , How you spell it is K-L-O-O-K.

So look it up. Have a search , and see if you like it, see if, , it's worth it, but it's well worth it for us every time we've been so far. And I know that it just provides really good value for those activities and transportation in Japan. So look into it. So we took the shuttle from NATA down to Tokyo Bay where Disney is.

 , We are going to Disney Sea the next day. So I went ahead and used this $300 credit that the Capital One Venture X Card comes with. I knew I was gonna use the credit and I saw that on , the Capital One portal, the Hotel Okura, Tokyo Bay, was available to book. So I went ahead and booked it using the Venture X travel credit that was given to me.

And for one night stay, , the cash value would've been $194. The credit covered all of that. Plus I still had another $106 left on that credit. Let me say that Disney Sea was probably my favorite theme park that I've ever been to, and I live in Orlando, Florida. I've been to all the theme parks. Disney Sea was incredible and.

Actually, I used a guide, , I bought a digital guide by TDR Explorer and he made a really good guide , on Disney, Tokyo, Disney Sea, and Universal Japan. I got to Disney one because that's where we were going this time. I didn't know about it when we went to Universal, but he highlights everything.

Everything you should know, all these different areas. , I didn't have a lot of time to research, , Disney scene. We were only there for one day. And I wanted to make sure we got the most out of that trip. So if you're ever wondering, , or you want more info about it, TDR Explorer has a YouTube channel.

Chris is a fantastic person to follow for, , theme park related things, even popups, , like themed cafes. Definitely give him a look on YouTube because I've learned a lot from him from, , just about learning about Japan in general. After our one night stay at the hotel Okta Tokyo Bay, we made our way over to the Hyatt Ginza Centric.

This is where I redeemed 121,000 Chase ultimate rewards to Hyatt. This hotel would've cost $740 a night. And the total cash value was $4,440. This was our first time saying in Ginza, the time before in 2023, we stayed in Zuku and Asa. So this was our first time saying in Ginza, I know it's, known for it's more high end brands and.

And high end shopping, but I thought it was a fantastic area. It was really close to the station, which we hopped on every single day, and we were able to visit so many different locations this time. Then we visited back in 2023. We got to go out to Ki Chichi and, , Shimic. Awa. We got to see, see the sky tree.

We completely missed that area last time. We made our way out to GoTo Cji, which also has GoTo Cchi Temple, which is the cat temple. , You might have seen a picture of a thousand little lucky cats or Man Nichols, uh, lined up. And it's a really nice and charming area. The. Whole area of GoTo Ji embraces cats and you can see it throughout the town, like little cats all over.

And it was just really nice. We also got to see Yaka Za, which is like an old shopping district over by Osaka. It's kind of to the west of Osaka. We got to visit Kaci, which is like Kitchen Street, and we got to buy some kitchen items for some of our friends and for ourselves as well. So it was good to see more parts of Tokyo that we had missed a lot of last time because honestly, Tokyo is massive and it will take forever to see everything and visit every place there, but that's what makes it so great.

You'll never run outta things to do Tokyo's. So massive. You know, as of right now, it's still my favorite city that I've ever been to. There's just so much to it, it just blows my mind every time you're there. Going back to the Hyatt Gudo centric, just like all the other Hyatts during this trip, it was another fantastic stay and I couldn't talk highly enough about it.

I really, I enjoyed this thing more than the ,  hyatt Regency Shinjuku. , I think the location was better for the Hyatt Ginza and I felt like the room was better . Also during this trip, we were able to make it out to a baseball game in Japan, and this is something I really wanted to do.

I really wanted , to go to a baseball game. I know it's Japan's number one sport. I've seen the videos of how high energy the crowd can be, and my God, did that exceed my expectations. We ended up going to the cul swallows baseball game. It was held at the Meiji Jingu Stadium, which is the Tokyo Ult Swallows home stadium, and they were playing the Giants ti Giants, which I believe I'm, I'm not sure, but they are like.

The big team in Tokyo, this is the number one team they play at the Tokyo Dome. So this was a massive game, and now I'm a converted Alt Swallows fan. That's my team. They actually won that night, and the experience was fantastic. The energy was so high, the food was so incredible. , . I can definitely go to my, my Instagram page, look at the stories.

You could see, , I have everything labeled, but you'll be able to see our trip in more detail and you can see it, , in video and put what I'm saying together. But it was an incredible experience and I think anyone going to Japan should go to a baseball game because, Just being able to be around that kind of energy and see how passionate the fans are, it was something really worth experiencing. So once our six nights were up at the Hyatt Ginza, we had one more night at the hotel Torah Noon Hills. This was 25,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards that I transferred from Chase over to Hyatt.

The value was at $591 cash. Definitely out of all the hotel redemptions during this trip, this hotel was at the highest of luxury amongst them all. This was an excellent hotel. I wish we had stayed more than one night, but unfortunately it's also a little bit tough with availability. Just make sure you book it far in advance.

This hotel was fantastic. The room was. Very nice. , They even had a lounge area that you can go grab some drinks, , have some snacks, and it had a view of the Tokyo Tower. So this, this was definitely a very nice hotel. It was located more in the business area, not too far from the Tokyo Tower, so there's not as much going on in that area itself as if you were to stay in Shinjuku or Shibuya.

But know that this hotel was fantastic and definitely worth looking up when you're redeeming, , hotels or Hyatts around the Tokyo area. So as we were making our way out from Japan, ,  I booked a flight from Tokyo to San Francisco again, just the one leg, one way. And this was with Japan Airlines via Alaska.

So I had an Alaska card and I hit the signup bonus of 70,000 points. With the spend that I put on the card, I had just about 75,000 points. Well, the two one ways from Heida Airport in Tokyo to San Francisco was 75,000 Alaska miles. What we paid for taxes and fees was $113 and 62 cents, and the value of this flight with Japan Airlines was $3,953.

So right there you get an alliance because even though these were Alaska miles, Alaska is in the One World Alliance with Japan Airlines. None of the major banks transfer over to Japan Airlines. But because of this alliance, it allows me to take my Alaska miles, see the Japan Airlines flights, and redeem my Alaska miles for one of those Japan Airlines flights.

Which what? Which is what we did for this flight. So after this flight from Tokyo to San Francisco, we once again stayed at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, which isn't far from the airport. We stayed the one night there. It cost us another 15,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards, which we transferred over to Hyatt to get that redemption.

The next morning in San Francisco. We ended up taking a Southwest flight from San Francisco to Orlando. We had a connection in Denver, which we were able to use the lounge, the Capital One Lounge with my Venture X Card. I can't remember why, but I booked myself and my wife Cassandra, separately, so my flight was 14,931 Rapid Rewards points, and Cassandra's was 11,315.

Rapid Rewards. , We do have two Southwest cars. I have the business performance and Cassandra has the Southwest priority. So we are able to get some Southwest , points that way. What we paid for these flights were just $11 and 20 cents in fees, and the cost would've been around $420 for one way together.

So overall, you can see how I pieced all these. Flights and hotel stays with all the redemptions and points and how I leveraged partnerships or alliances to get the most value out of my points and miles. So overall, the total cash value of this trip would've been $15,880 and 20 cents, what we paid out of pocket for those taxes and fees.

Was $221 and 62 cents, and the amount of points we used was 559,211 points. It did take some time. We hit a lot of signup bonuses. We were playing the two player system, which was referring each other back and forth. Making sure we get those referral bonuses along with hitting the signup bonuses and hitting multipliers on that card, which really boosted the amount of points we got.

Don't feel too overwhelmed by this trip. , This is me just. Really understanding the system more and feeling more confident about points and miles. I know it's a lot of points and it was a lot of redemptions, but remember I started off small.

I started off with that one trip to Hawaii where we went to Oahu and stayed in Waikiki and just had a five night stay at a Hyatt, and all we did was take Southwest flights, so don't feel overwhelmed by the trip. I just wanted to show an example of a trip we just took, how we went about booking flights and hotels

and how we took advantage of those alliances and partnerships because we knew that Korean Air wasn't a partner with any bank, but if we booked it through Virgin, they're a partner and we can get those flights that way. So there are workarounds, and we'll go over that. This was just more putting everything together and showing you an example of how this all can really work out.

And the trips that you can envision for yourself in the future. This was an incredible trip. I was so lucky to be able to do this and to be able to have learned this hobby and to save so much money to only spend $221 and 62 cents on flights and hotels.  was incredible because we were able to put that, spend somewhere else, , in this trip and create memories.

And we had a whole photo shoot in Tokyo and we were able to have a baking class, do an Airbnb experience, and go to a baseball game and go shopping , , and eat so much food having points and miles. , It allows you to. Create more memories , and be able to spend in ways that can really enhance your experience when you visit these places.

So I hope this episode helps and feel free to reach out anytime. Feel free to message me. I'm super passionate about this and I love to talk about it even more. So if you have any questions or you wanna reach out, feel free. If you enjoyed this episode, , consider giving it a follow in follow along for so many more stories and redemptions.

We'll talk about more points, we'll talk about more itineraries activities, and prefectures we'll be talking about more. Of Japan as a country and I'm so excited to, to get into those topics and hopefully have guests on to be able to talk about their experiences as well. So definitely follow along and we'll see you on the next episode.

See you.