Originally Posted by sdsearch

No, but you can redeem points there. Many Choice hotels in Japan are only 8000 points a night often, a steal in that case.

The FT world is full of redeem-only situations. Hotels have redeem only partners and/or locations (in addition to countries such as Japan, Choice also has a redeem-only relationship with the Preferred Hotel Group), airlines have redeem only partners, etc.

So the good deal is to earn Choice points elsewhere, and redeem them in Japan, rather than (unsuccessfully) trying to earn them in Japan.

(Or just stay elsewhere in Japan. What's so special about a paid Choice hotel stay compared to a paid stay anywhere else, if you aren't going to earn Choice points anyway?)

You can earn points in Japan in many other programs (at hotels in those programs).

Also, if earning 250 UA miles (per Choice stay in qualifying countries) is so important to you, you may want to look into whether UA has a site where you can book hotels through UA and earn UA miles that way, and if that works in Japan.

(Worrying about whether or not you earn 250 miles on a stay halfway around the world, that's what seems crazy to me.)