I am looking for a business class flight from the US to Japan. Any origination airport and any dates. Any tips?

flights.google.com

Good luck

If what you want is not necessarily business class but a discounted flat bed seat, take a look at https://www.zipair.net/en

Completely agree with flights.google.com
I will say that for my trip last month, I found the cheapest JL fares to come out of LAX so we did a positioning flight with miles from CLT to LAX
Not knowing where you are located at, if you routinely fly out of a hub (say CLT where I am) look for local airports an hour or so drive from that hub as origination...that can cut 20%+ off the cost sometimes
Sakura season (just starting now) is always going to be expensive
I could go on but with the limited info given, this is a start

Welcome to FT. If you really are totally flexible on dates and origin airport then you may have some options. But keep in mind that this is the first full year that Japan is open for general tourism so deals will be harder to find than in 2019.

Check the premium fare deals forum on FT, there are occasional deals to Japan or to nearby cities (ICN, TPE, etc.) from which you can backtrack to wherever in Japan you are heading.

As others have suggested, Google Flights will be your friend. You will tend to find deals to Japan from LAX, JFK, YYZ, and YVR, all of which are big cities with a lot of competition. This requires a positioning flight as well as transit through Canada in the case of the latter two. Google Flights lets you search from up to ~6 origin cities at once which makes things more efficient.

Finnair has offered decent deals to Tokyo and other cities in Asia from JFK for ~$3k, with a long layover in HEL.

I had to book a return flight from Tokyo to LAX in May, every site I found was over $900, no award flights availabe, google flights had a fare for $550 on AA's japan site for $550, which took me to an amadeus site to book. I searched same exact flight on AA's US flight, and it was $950. Flights saved me $400 on a flight I never would have found otherwise.

LAX and SFO have the most flights right now. I booked United Polaris award flights LAX->HND and back a couple of months ago, there are saver rates available but you have to be open to certain days.

I ended up deciding to leave a day later and found a United flight operated by ANA in Premium Economy for $1300 one way. I snagged that up and cancelled my outbound points reservation.

I'm going at the end of golden week so things were still busy. If you are looking for award flights try Denver as well since it's not as common of a search as LAX/SFO.

That is a great cash price for a lie flat! Thanks for sharing.

Awesome I will check into google flights! Thanks!