Originally Posted by ja62ben
Consider getting a AA card with generous sign up miles -- shop around; you may get 10 to 20K miles for signing up. Also, you get miles for dollars spent regardless of when you payoff. Good luck.
With AA card, it's possible to redeem for less miles for your award ticket, saving between 5K to 7.5K miles. Each quarter, AA releases the destination lists with discount/less miles required to redeem ticket. Japan is sometimes in the destination list.