ELthesax

Hello everyone! I'm pretty new at posting in the forums, so please forgive me for making any mistakes.

I am an American living and working in a somewhat remote area of Japan. I used to earn miles via traveling between home and school, as well as the infamous Chase Sapphire Preferred card. Now that I earn an income in yen, I would prefer to earn miles through a Japanese program. I don't travel as much due to my location and lack of time.

I currently use either cash (it's rural Japan ) or my Japanese CC for expenses, but I want those sweet sweet miles! My family lives in Hawaii, so I would like to visit them at least annually if possible!

Any suggestions for a card and/or frequent flier program or tips/tricks from others in Japan would be much appreciated! I still have a few thousand miles in both my Chase rewards and Delta accounts from back home, so if there is something that would work with those, that'd be great!

dvs7310

Whose miles do you want?

UA has the most on offer, cards from JCB, MUFG, UC, Saison (not foreigner friendly), and Diners.

Delta has Citi and Amex

AA has only Resona

JL and NH programs are pretty much inferior to US programs unless you can earn top tier elite status. You're not flying enough so no reason.

Aside from these, also the Japanese Amex and Diners have quite a few transfer partners at a 1:1 ratio. Nearly forgot too, there's also the SPG Amex, annual fee for the Japan version is steep but it comes with SPG Gold status and a one night certificate for up to a Cat 5 property. They have loads of transfer partners.

My primary cards are JCB Mileage Plus gold (1.5x miles per 100 yen) and Amex & Diners for other programs. Worth note, the Japanese Diners can transfer to AA or UA which the US version does not.

One cool card we have here is the Delta Skymiles Amex Gold, I'm purely a * flyer so it's no use to me, but it gives you automatic Gold Medallion status in Skymiles which would be great for you if you want to fly DL, since it sounds like you wouldn't earn any status another way. DL gold gives you Skyteam lounge access when flying any Skyteam member.

Lastly if you have no credit established in Japan yet then Amex or Citi are your best go-to's for a first card, pretty much guaranteed approval. Rakuten is the other really easy one but useless points program.

HGHUA

Though its amazing how much Japan relies on cash so much.

dvs7310

I notice many Japanese people still prefer to carry a wad of cash and pay for everything with it, but its becoming far less necessary than it was even 10 years ago. They are doing it out of preference rather than necessity, the liberation and convenience from going cashless hasn't caught on here for whatever reason. There are plenty of fee free credit cards on the market, so that can't be the issue. For point hogs like myself, in cities most everything except the smallest family owned business will take cards (and the post office), and even in the countryside there are plenty of places that take cards.

jamar

I have to say, I've been plenty of times, and I've noticed two kinds of places refusing cards a lot- restaurants and massage places (the regular kind). Oh, and public transport (commuter lines).

Along those lines, the NH program may be inferior but their Super Flyers CC still gives *G status, doesn't it? Might be worth a try as well.

dvs7310

In Tokyo that's only an issue I see with smaller restaurants, but I rarely go to those anyway so it doesn't affect me much. Chains and larger places almost always take cards (there are an odd few that are Visa and Mastercard only, no JCB, Amex, and Diners). All of the bars I frequent accept cards also, but there are a couple that will only take a card for bills over 3,000 yen. Having said that, I live in a bit of an expat bubble, so the places I'm typically going have probably gotten enough complaints back in the cash only days that they caved in to keep the foreign clientele. I've never been to a massage place (either kind) so can't speak personally on that.

There are ways around the credit card and public transport issue, though both require you to live in Japan. The easiest way to pay for train/bus with credit card is use Mobile Suica on your phone, pretty much every phone sold in Japan except the iPhone has a FELICA chip and can load Mobile Suica. The other way is to get one of the many Suica or Pasmo credit cards from a number of banks, they all have auto load to the credit card. Some are actually somewhat useful, there's one for JAL and ANA for example.

For tourists, the only way to pay regular local transport on credit card is by using a pass (like the JR passes), but that's only going to be good on JR, not the subway or bus lines. Express, reserved seat trains usually allow you to buy on credit card, even the private lines.

Yes, you're right about the Super Flyers card, there's a similar one for JL too... one major caveat though, to get one you have to make Platinum status on NH, it's 50,000 miles in a year but 25,000 of that has to be on NH metal. Pretty easy for someone flying overseas in paid business class regularly but they are very stingy with economy fares, so it may take 100k BIS miles or more to get 50k if flying discount economy and crediting to NH. For people though who can easily make NH Platinum once, it's a great card, the annual fee is fairly low ($100-150 range if I recall) and you can keep it for life as long as you pay the fee, so you can go back to your preferred mileage program after earning it once.