Aug 2012 - Tokyo in Pictures

My weekend in Tokyo was a busy whirlwind of a trip.  After setting up our base camp in the Ebisu district at the Westin Tokyo hotel, we woke up early the first morning and head to Tsukiji Fish Market for the best sushi in the world at the infamous Daiwa Sushi.

Unfortunately, despite getting there at 6:30AM, we found a long line of hungry people ahead of us and were told it would be a 3 hour wait.

Since we didn't have the luxury of time (and since my father's a little bitch when he's not fed on time), we compromised and found a nearby sushi restaurant without the line.  We're no experts but this was amazing and to be honest, I'm not sure we'd be able to tell the difference between this restaurant and Daiwa.

So after we ate the best sushi my parents have ever had for breakfast, we were off to visit other parts of Tokyo.  The main parts of the city we visited were Asakusa (the old town area), Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, and even nearby Yokohama to see a Japanese baseball game.

Aug 2012 - Westin Tokyo

Hotel Stay Details 
Hotel: The Westin Tokyo
Dates: August 24-27, 2012
Rate Paid:  35,356 Capital One Rewards/night
Regular Rate: ¥22,125 JPY/night ($280 USD)
Total $ Savings: $1,060
Point Redemption Value: 1.0 cents/pt

Another trip, another Starwoods Hotel stay.  We were in Tokyo for 3 nights and booked in advance to lock in the 25% discounted rate of ¥22,125 JPY/night.  However, the rate shown upfront does not include the 15% service charge they will add on at the end, so keep that in mind when you're booking Japanese hotels.

After our 14 hour flight to Tokyo, we landed at Narita Airport and took the Japanese Limobus (¥3,000 per person) to the Westin Hotel (took about 2 hrs with traffic but very comfortable seating).

Location
As TripAdvisor reviewers have said before, it's a bit of a walk to the metro stations. If you want the JR line (connecting to Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku), then it's about 10 minute walk from the hotel (including 5 minutes inside the station). If you want the Tokyo Metro Hibya line (connecting Roppongi, Ginza), then it's an additional 5 minutes through the station to the other side where you encounter all the restaurants in downtown Ebisu.

Check In / Room

Check in was smooth and the lobby impressed us a lot.  While we were not upgraded to a club room (with access to the club lounge), they were kind enough to have a baby crib waiting in our room along with a "Westin Kids" goody bag (toys, electrical outlet covers, etc).

We had a beautiful King bedroom on the 17th floor overlooking the city. The room was very quiet and given the business-oriented clients, it was a relaxing environment.   The room as immaculately clean and well maintained.  A very nice welcome after a long flight.

The bathroom also had one of those high tech toilets with the control panel.  My father didn't let me play with it though, since I'm neither potty trained nor tech savvy.

Check Out
Since my father had some spare Capital One Reward (COR) points after opening up a Capital One Venture Rewards card and getting 100,000 COR points as the sign on bonus during a special promotion, we paid for our hotel room with the Capital One credit card.

Unlike other frequent flyer miles and points, COR points are fixed value (1 COR point = $0.01), meaning they can only be used to credit against your outstanding credit card balance.

So 100,000 translated into $1,000 off my credit card bill if we redeemed them for Travel Related expenses (hotels, flights).  So when it was time to pay for the Westin Tokyo hotel, which conveniently came to around $1,000 USD, the choice was obvious.  $0 out of pocket for 3 nights in Tokyo.  Nicely done, dad!

Overall
We were happy to get a nice room and a comfortable place to stay for our weekend in Tokyo, but since this was my first time in Japan, we really didn't spend a lot of time in the hotel.  We had a lot to see and only a few days to see it all!

Reference Links

• Japanese Limo Bus

Aug 2012 - Japan in Style

Flight #9 - United 79 
Newark (EWR) – Tokyo (NRT) 
Thursday, Aug 23, 2012
Depart: 11:05AM / Arrive: 1:55PM 
Duration: 13hr 50min 
Aircraft: Boeing 777 
Seat: 8A and 8B (Business)
Earned:  0 miles (6,732 miles flown)
Cost: 120,000 United miles + $79 / person
Redemption Value:  6.6 cents / mile
Lifetime Miles:  23,270

If you know my father, you know he's obsessed with frequent flyer miles and points.  But sometimes, his annoying hobby pays off, like the time where my parents and I flew to Tokyo and Seoul in business class to visit my great-grandmothers in South Korea.

The last week of August is usually a slow time of year for New York finance.  So in early March, he booked a trip using his United Mileage Plus Miles for the 3 of us to go to South Korea for Aug 24-Sept 2 hoping that since I'd be almost 10 months old at the time, I would be able to handle my 3rd long flight and not piss off the rich people flying up front.

Originally, my father just used the United website search engine to book any reasonable award itinerary that he could find.  He didn't find any direct flights to Seoul, so he picked one that that stopped in Chicago flying Asiana Airlines.  Basically as long as the routes are served by United or one of its Star Alliance partners, they could be combined to make an award booking using United Mileage Plus miles.

Remembering that United lets you have a free stopover on round trip award tickets, he found flights that would give us a weekend with our friends Beth, Paul and Jack in Chicago and were business class for the long haul segments.

• Fri Aug 24 - Newark to Chicago (United Economy)
• Mon Aug 27 - Chicago to Seoul  (Asiana Business)
• Sun Sept 2 - Seoul to Los Angeles (Asiana Business)
• Sun Sept 2 - Los Angeles to Newark (United Economy)

Over the spring/summer, however, my father started reading more and more about interesting stopover routes that United had access to.  While it would have been nice to see my friend Jack again, I had just seen him in February and I heard that Japanese people LOVE adorable things like Hello Kitty so I was sure they'd love me.

So my father kept checking back for award flight availability and in July found a flight to Seoul via Tokyo on United for almost the same dates as the original itinerary, except that instead of leaving Friday Aug 24th (and only missing 1 day of work), it left Thursday Aug 23rd (2 days missed).  After thinking about it for a bit, he took the gamble that work wouldn't be that busy in late August and changed the itinerary.

Also, since he was flying back to Newark via Los Angeles (a very popular route for business travelers), they didn't have any first/business class seat availability for the award booking.  So instead, he took advantage of United's flexible routing rules and changed the itinerary to fly 50 minutes from LA to San Diego the next morning (9:55AM Mon Sept 3rd) and then get business class seats on the 5 hour San Diego-Newark flight.  The reason he could "stopover" in LA was because the layover was less than 24 hours so it didn't count as a 2nd stopover.

Now our itinerary looked like this (almost all Business class):

• Thur Aug 23 - Newark to Tokyo (United Business) - STOPOVER
• Mon Aug 27 - Tokyo to Seoul  (United Business) - MAIN DESTINATION
• Sun Sept 2 - Seoul to LA (Asiana Business)
• Mon Sept 3 - LA to San Diego (United Economy) - LAYOVER
• Mon Sept 3 - San Diego to Newark (United Business)

Since I was flying as a Lap Child, I didn't cost any additional miles, but I did cost 10% of the cash fare - which was going to be a lot since it was in a premium cabin to major business destinations.  So my "lap child ticket" cost $800 in addition to the $79 co-pay each of my parents had to pay for their mileage bookings.  That implies that each ticket cost $8000 for a total cash price of $16,800 for the 3 of us.

Even deducting the $79 co-pay, the 120,000 United miles per person were redeemed for $7921 of value or 6.6 cents/ mile.  Note: anything above 3.5 cents / mile is a great redemption so this was an outstanding one.  Nice job, Dad!

References:

• United Mileage Award Charts
• Hack My Trip - Maximize Your Miles: Stopovers and Open Jaws on United