Winter in Japan for the non-skiing family

[Rich]

What a shame you can’t find any reward flights. I am only bronze as well but this did not limit visibility of award seats on partner airlines such as JAL on release date. Have no seats been available for the dates you wanted or insufficient/ wrong class? I did have to grab them basically on release date, so about 360 days in advance.

You can only select to Dec 26 at the moment, so not quite 360 days. I thought maybe you were a higher tier and had more visibility. (Everything up to that date in late Dec is Classic Plus at a very high rate.) I am looking any time from the 27th so we will keep watching but not getting my hopes up.

 

[ShelleyB]

You can only select to Dec 26 at the moment, so not quite 360 days. I thought maybe you were a higher tier and had more visibility. (Everything up to that date in late Dec is Classic Plus at a very high rate.) I am looking any time from the 27th so we will keep watching but not getting my hopes up.

My understanding is tier only affects Qantas visibility. I used the multi city to search partner airlines. We rarely have any luck getting international Qantas reward flights. But JAL have been very consistent in their releases. If you click on latest date apparently selectable in calendar you can often see flights a few days beyond.

 

[Quickstatus]

but perhaps that is as a lowly Bronze family.

It does not get a lot better with better metals.
Dont discount going via non QF airlines. SQ for example - convert Amex points to KF miles

 

[ShelleyB]

Day 8. A whole week has passed. Leaving Hirosaka today so was pleased to wake up and find the sky had cleared and Mt. Iwaki showed her face. Not a little reminiscent of Mt Fuji and is in fact sometimes known as Tsugaru Fuji.



Today heading off to Hachinohe. Still in Aomori region but on the east coast. Our luggage which we had sent from Morioka was waiting for us at Hachinohe hotel, so unencumbered by bulky luggage decided upon a brief visit to Aomori before heading to our final destination. Back on the Ou line to Aomori, dropping the carry on roller bag in a locker on arrival.

Had a walk around the seafront near the station, but did not visit the Nebuta museum which houses the floats and other paraphernalia from the annual Nebuta festival as ShelleyB-son did not seem that keen. Others on here have reported from the museum (such as @Noel Mugavin early in 2025).

 

[ShelleyB]

After our short visit, headed one stop back towards Hirosaki to shin-Aomori, the shinkansen to Hachinohe, and a short local ride to Honhachinohe. This is the one bit of our trip where we are not staying immediately near a train station. All the action in Hachinohe appears to be a short walk away from any train station, and I did not want to be walking to and from a less than ideal hotel every night just to be near a station.

Our hotel for the next 4 nights is another Daiwa Roynet. It’s about 10 mins walk from Honhachinohe station, or a short bus ride. Expecting similar snow levels to Hirosaki or Aomori, I imagined we would bus or taxi to hotel to prevent having to drag our little bag through snow, but as it was there was very little snow on the ground. The microclimate here on the east coast obviously keeps the snow levels much reduced. So we walked.

The room itself is functional, and at least the bathroom is less weird than the Art Hotel Hirosaki. The town is not as pretty as Hirosaki, although of course that may be a function of the lack of snow. Hirosaki might not be that pretty either when not covered in magical white powder.

The room and the view:

 

[ShelleyB]

Sadly the afternoon was spent doing chores, particularly doing laundry having travelled for over a week. Boring. But one of the many advantages of Japanese chain hotels is they all have coin laundry machines. Cheap and easy. Most include detergent, although we do always travel with laundry sheets just in case.

Went for a wander looking for dinner. Many many Izakayas, although lots were on the more bar side of things and thus not suitable for ShelleyB-son. But after not too much searching, found a very suitable place called Miraizaka. A shoes-off Izakaya with multiple private spaces. We were at a counter but mostly had the counter space to ourselves.

We were two hungry people and went a bit crazy on the extensive menu. Sensible people would have ordered a few dishes at a time, but we ordered a lot at once. Lucky the place was not busy or we would have run our of room. Highlights were the steak and the gyoza. A sake for me and a couple of craft ginger ales for the boy. The entire bill, which ultimately included 7 dishes (don’t judge - the boy ate almost 3 serves of gyoza by himself) was about $50 Aud. We will almost certainly visit again in our 4 nights here.