Originally Posted by
moondog
Most flights leave at around 9a, and return at 6p. This drill won't fit the OP's schedule. Yes, he could fly to HND instead of NRT, but this entails quite a bit more on the cost front.
In my opinion, even if the scheduling worked out, flying into NRT would just waste too much time in getting to and from Tokyo to make it worthwhile for a weekend. You can generally figure on ~2.5 hours from landing to central Tokyo by the time you clear immigration and get a train/bus.
HND, though, is quite doable from a logistics perspective, as immigration queues are practically non-existent and it's only about 30 minutes from civilisation. Pricing-wise, these flight are indeed exorbitant; I've found they're generally one of the best values for mileage redemption. On ANA, for instance, a PEK to HND redemption is 20,000 miles R/T in economy.