Originally Posted by
Skipfairweather
To add on to this, you may have luck if you wait till the last minute ~ 2 weeks before departure. For example, there are 3 available direct fights on the route Monday and Tuesday of next week. Of course, there's no guarantee that you'll get seats for when you want to go. My wife and I are going in mid-end May and we booked a Latitude reward on AC from YYZ to HND. Should ANA J availability come up between now and then we'll cancel in favour of those seats.
That sounds like a good strategy, I assume you are using e-ups on the AC flight to get into J (if you don't get ANA J?).