Originally Posted by
sodaisei
BTW, I was thinking recently about the "holy trinity" of frequent flyers credit cards in Japan. Can we agree on this?
ANA SFC, gives you Star Alliance Gold status.
JAL version of SFC, gives you the equivalent status.
AMEX Delta Gold Card, same as above.
With these 3 cards, are you some kind of semi god? I already have the ANA SFC and was thinking about getting the Amex Delta one, it is only 24,000Y per year and gives you Gold status...
Am I missing other cards? (Like the SPG one)
Traditionally I would have added the ANA To ME Card Pasmo JCB to any must-have combo of Japanese cards, because it offered the lucrative "sorachika route" where you could convert points from point sites such as G-Point at an 0.90 rate, but sadly that conversion route is being closed off at the end of March 2018. I think the SPG Amex is a good deal, considering it also gives you gold status for Marriot, which grants club lounge access at their hotels. For the Delta card, obviously you need to fly enough to justify the benfits and there is a lot of route overlap Ex-JP.