So my Lufthansa miles are expiring at the end of the year and I just scratched together enough to get myself a free flight.

I no longer live in Germany and most of the Lufthansa deals and extra miles don't apply for me anymore. With Tokyo now being my hub the most obvious FF program seems to be the ANA one. A ton of credit cards here allow you to convert points to ANA or directly earn with every purchase.

Besides ANA, Thai Airways is the airline from Star Alliance I am probably using the most.

Is there something else I should look into? I am a moderate flyer and fast expiring miles can definitely be a problem.

If expiration is an issue for you then probably United. We have several credit cards as well that either directly credit to Mileage Plus or indirectly via point transfers.

Direct:
JCB & Saison Gold cards are the best as both offer 1.5 miles per 100 yen.
UC & MUFG both credit at 1 mile per 100 yen.

Indirect:
Diners Club (Japan) converts to United and a small handful of other airlines, limit of 100,000 miles per year, per airline converted. I've unfortunately almost hit my annual limit for Mileage Plus already so will probably send to KE SkyPass after that.

UA also has cheap intra-Japan awards and availability is extremely good, better than NH's own award availability interestingly enough.

Problem with NH Mileage Club is that they only issue round trip awards and are no longer distance based, so the award chart isn't actually that great. It takes a lot of miles to make a meaningful redemption because of the round trip rule. There are a few sweet spots in their chart, but it's not as flexible as UA in my opinion. If you'd fly enough to make Diamond however the benefits are decent.

Thai's Royal Orchid Plus is ridiculous, so unless you're flying enough to make high level status it has very little to offer. We also only have 1 credit card that credits directly to ROP issued by SMBC. It is however a transfer partner of both Diners Club and American Express.

As a new arrival, you may find it difficult to get your first credit card, so Amex Global Transfer may be a jump start on the process if you carry one in another country now.

Thanks a lot for the tips!

Which specific cards are you talking about? I checked through the offering and couldn't find cards that give you 1.5 miles per 100 yen (http://kakaku.com/card/list.asp?Type=302)

Ah I am here for a little longer now and own 2 JP cards already so I'm not so concerned about the application

What are your objectives from a ffp?
Freq flyer miles/points are not equal to earn or burn.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-...post-here.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

Be careful with expiry http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-t-expire.html

This post seems a bit of a broken record anytime someone asks a similar question.

The OP sounds like they will probably earn as many if not more miles form credit card spend than actually flying... once credit card spend becomes the primary provider of points then actually the earn rate on most programs does equalize quite a bit in most countries.

I have given some very location specific advice to the OP which likely becomes far more relevant than the very generic Star Alliance wide threads. People living in Japan with high credit card spend, due to the local peculiarities of our market, will most likely have very different priorities than someone in HK, Singapore, Johannesburg, Frankfurt, etc. We, for better or worse, have better credit card earn rates to Mileage Plus than almost any other program (including ANA).