Every big trip starts with the same quiet moment of commitment — the one where you stop browsing flights and actually book them. For Japan 2027, that moment has come and gone. The dates are locked: out of Sydney on Saturday 23 January, home again Monday 8 February. Sixteen nights for me, a little less for the two travelling with me if they choose to join us in this journey. No flexibility, no “maybe we shift it a week” — those dates are my fixed points that everything else in the itinerary now has to bend around.
So before I write a word about ryokans or bullet trains or where to find the best bowl of ramen in Shinjuku, it’s worth talking about the part that makes all of it possible: getting there.
Why ANA, and why Haneda
I’m flying ANA. NH880 out of Sydney, departing 21:45 on the Saturday and landing at Haneda at 05:20 the next morning. It’s a red-eye, which I’ll come back to, but the part I care about most is the four letters at the end: HND, not NRT.
If you’ve only ever flown into Narita, Haneda is a revelation. It’s roughly 15 kilometres from central Tokyo versus Narita’s 60-odd, which on the ground translates to the difference between being at your hotel in 30–40 minutes and resigning yourself to an hour-plus on the Narita Express before the holiday has even started. When you’re landing at dawn after a sleepless flight, that gap matters more than almost anything else about the booking. Haneda gets you into the city while you’ve still got the energy to enjoy it.
The return is NH859, the daytime service — 08:35 out of Haneda, into Sydney at 20:15. Civilised hours, lands you home on a Monday evening with a day to recover before the working week. For anyone travelling with me on the slightly earlier exit, it’s the same flight number a couple of days prior. One aircraft, two return dates, everyone accounted for.
The red-eye, honestly
Here’s the trade-off nobody tells you about the late Saturday departure: you don’t really sleep on it. Nine-ish hours in the air with a 9:45pm start sounds like you’ll drift off after dinner and wake up over Japan, and maybe some people manage that. I’m not one of them. What actually happens is you doze in 40-minute increments, give up somewhere over the Philippines, and walk into Haneda at sunrise running on fumes.
The upside is that you land at the start of a full day instead of the end of one. My standing advice — to myself as much as anyone — is to treat day one as a soft landing. Drop the bags, stay vertical, walk around in daylight to reset the body clock, and don’t book anything that requires sharp decision-making before about 2pm. The trip is long enough that one gentle opening day costs you nothing and saves you a great deal.
A few practical notes on the booking itself:
- Two checked bags in economy on this fare, which is generous and means no agonising over what to leave behind. Coming home heavier than you left is a near-certainty in Japan.
- Haneda’s a 24-hour airport, so the dawn arrival is genuinely painless — trains and the monorail are running, and nothing’s shuttered.
- Book the seats early. ANA opens seat selection well ahead, and on a red-eye the difference between a window to lean on and a middle seat by the galley is the difference between two hours of broken sleep and none.
The economy versus business question
This is the one I keep turning over.
I’ve booked economy. But there’s a particular flavour of temptation that hits when you’re staring down a 9-hour overnight flight, and it goes: for a few thousand more, you could lie flat.
Let me be straight about the maths, because that’s how I think about everything. ANA business class — “The Room” on their newer aircraft, which is one of the best business products flying — runs a substantial premium over economy on this route, often two to three times the fare depending on when you book. For a single traveller chasing a luxury finish to a trip, there’s a real argument for it, especially on the outbound when arriving rested would let you skip the soft landing entirely.
Where I’ve landed, at least for now: economy out, and keep watching for a business upgrade on the way home. The logic is that the outbound red-eye is survivable and I’d rather spend that money on the ground — the back half of this trip already has a serious luxury finish built into it, and I’d rather the splurge live there than in a seat. The return is the one I’m still tempted by. Landing into a Monday and going almost straight back to work would be a lot easier from a flat bed.
For anyone weighing the same decision, the honest framing is this: business class on a short-ish overnight to Asia is a want, not a need, and the value is highest when you genuinely can’t sleep in economy and you’ve got something demanding waiting at the other end. If you’re young, flexible, and the trip is the reward, economy and a good neck pillow will get you there perfectly well.
Tracking the price
Fixed dates make the fare easier to watch, not harder — there’s only one set of flights to follow. I’ve got the route saved in Google Flights with price tracking switched on, which quietly emails me whenever the fare moves. It’s the single best free tool for this. If you’re following along and want to see roughly what Sydney–Tokyo is doing for these dates, you can open the same search in Google Flights and hit the “Track prices” toggle yourself.
A couple of things I’ve learned watching fares on this route:
- Prices for late January tend to firm up rather than soften as you get closer, because it’s still inside the broader peak-season window. Waiting for a bargain that isn’t coming is its own kind of mistake.
- The big swings tend to be about cabin and routing, not date. A direct ANA service holds its price far more steadily than the one-stop options, which is part of why I stopped agonising and booked the direct.
The flights are the boring, expensive, non-negotiable foundation that everything else stands on. With them locked in, the fun part begins — and there’s a lot of it to write about. Next up: where we’re actually staying, starting with a two-night ryokan in Hakone that’s the centrepiece of the whole first week.
Japan 2027 is locked in. More to come, every few days, as I plan it out in the open.