Introduction | Welcome back to the Report!

A $40,000 USD trip to Japan.

This was one of my favorite travel schedule that I came up with during my wedding anniversary with my wife back in 2019. Now that Japan has reopened its borders after 2 years of closure, I wanted to write this travel report to One of my most memorable moments in this travel hobby is booking 1st Class in Singapore Airlines and reveling in the entire class with my wife during our wedding anniversary trip to Tokyo, Japan.

Flights | Singapore Airlines Galore

Los Angeles to Tokyo | First Class | Review

What a glorious moment. Having all 4 1st Class seats to yourself.

When you book for these aspirational moments, you tend to anchor the entire trip based on these flights - for me, when there were two first class spots opened for Singapore Airlines to Tokyo, Japan - I knew that our trip would begin on that day of. Thus, I took out 190K Krisflyer miles and booked ourselves on SQ11, from LAX to NRT. We paid $50.66 for award booking and $11.20 for taxes. I booked both seat 1C and 1D, which would allow us to enjoy the comforts of the massive two bed setup (little did we know down the road, we would be getting ALL FOUR 1st class seats to ourselves)

And for the moment most people were waiting for - the cash price! Ladies and gentlemen, for two travelers flying first class to Japan, the total cash price for the two First Class tickets Singapore was a whopping $20,236 USD! That’s basically a Honda Civic right there. Clearly, using 190K miles was the way to go and continues to be one of my favorite redemption moments.

Tokyo to Singapore | Business Class | Review

Up next, I needed a way to get to Singapore. Since Singapore has a red-eye flight to Singapore from Haneda International Airport, I ventured my way back onto the website and scoured for any particular flights that had award space. At at time, Singapore Airlines was just charging 41K miles for a business class ticket, which I thought was a steal. Availability was open for May 5th, arriving May 6th on SQ635. This was a no brainer and I easily gave up 86K Krisflyer miles and $51.32 USD for award booking. I chose Seat 12K and 14K for me and my wife, which was a more private front of the business class segment.

For this flight, if paid in cash, would have been $3,835 USD for two business class tickets. Not a bad redemption for 86K miles!

Singapore to Hong Kong to San Francisco | Business Class

For the return leg, we anchored ourselves to Hong Kong, which would give me a flight back from HKG to SFO. Ideally, it made no sense to fly back to LAX and then take another flight from LAX to SJC.

With that in mind, award space was ample during my time of booking and there was a lot of space found for May 8th, which was SQ872. Departing at 2:30pm to 6:40pm, it would allow me to then anchor the second leg of the flight, SQ002 from HKG to SFO departing at 11:30pm and arriving at 9:15pm on May 8th. A busy schedule I suppose for flying home, but well worth it. With these two legs in mind, it only costed me 176K Krisflyer Miles and $331.72 for award booking and taxes.

Total cash price for both legs combined would have been $9,566 USD.

Flight Summary Report

In short, the spring of 2019 was one of the best redemption moments that I’ve made for me and my wife. Truly, 2019 was such a golden year for award travel, as later on in the year, we would make another trip to Taiwan and utilize a series of award bookings across the entire trip. Overall, this was one of the best uses of our miles to Asia. In summary, we used:

452,000 Singapore Airlines Krisflyer Miles transferred from our Amex and Chase accounts.
$444.90 USD for award booking and tax fees

Honestly, if we had paid the flights all in cash, it would costed us close to $33,637 USD! That’s pretty much a BMW 3 series of an Audi A4.

Hotels | You get a Conrad, You get a Conrad!

To set us up right for the Singapore Airlines First Class, we flew down from SJC to LAX and decided to opt in for the H Hotel Los Angeles, Curio Collection, which is conveniently next to the airport with a free shuttle. We booked one night for April 27th on 53K Hilton points, which during the time the cash price was around $181 USD. Curio Collections are always a nicer brand in the Hilton portfolio and we had a great time over there.

Hotel in Tokyo, especially during April and May, are notorious for being incredibly expensive and can sometimes knock out a lot of award spaces for hotels. To start, we were only able to utilize two of our IHG free night certificate at the Intercontinental The Strings Tokyo from April 28th to the 30th. While I would had loved to use the other two, there was simply no award spaces left. However, the hotel itself was fantastic and at a great location for us to begin our trip around Tokyo. During time of booking, the cash price per night was around $309 USD, based on the classic room. For that, the total cash price of the two night would be around $750 after taxes.

You can check out my review of the Intercontinental Tokyo, The Strings review here!

The Conrad brand has become sentimental to me as I’ve spent the most reviews and times at their portfolio. My wife and I had been hoarding Hilton points and were incredibly thrilled to book the Conrad Tokyo and the Conrad Osaka during our trip in Japan. First, the Conrad Tokyo.

For the two nights, we utilized 190K Hilton Points - because both of us were Diamond members, the cash rate of the nights were close to $600 a night due to us being upgraded to the King Executive Room with Bay view, which also gave us the executive lounge access. That being said, the cash price for these two nights would have been close to $1,300 USD.

I’ve made a pretty intensive review of the Conrad Tokyo over here

After Tokyo, we would head to Osaka and reside at the newly opened Conrad Osaka - I had a lot of expectations for this hotel and boy did they exceed my expectations by a mile. We were upgraded to the King Executive Room, which was an astounding $800 USD a night! If we had paid the nights in cash, it would be close to $2,600 USD for the three nights!

For this particular hotel, we used 2 Hilton Free Night certificates that we got from our Amex Hilton Aspire Card, and then utilized 95K Hilton points for the last night.

If you’re interested in the Conrad Osaka, check out my review here!

Lastly, for Singapore, we booked the Conrad Centennial Singapore as the location was close to the subway and location to work, which was located closer to Marina One.

For these two nights, we utilized 120K Hilton Points (60K a night) for May 6th to May 8th. The room we got was was a Premium King, a lovely upgrade from the deluxe King we booked with points. Average cash price per night was around $346 USD, with a total price of $829 after taxes.

The Conrad Centennial Singapore review can be found here!

Due to our massive bank of Hilton Points from our Amex cards and collections, we were able to fund a majority of our Japan trip with points and leverage the Hilton free night certificates, along with the IHG free night certificates to the max. All of these hotels were highly rated and incredibly sought after for US travelers. Having summed up the hotels, if we had paid the nights in cash, the total amount would have been $5,660 USD.

Thus, a summary report of what we spent for the trip abroad to Japan and Singapore: