Best ways to find award seats using Qantas Points from Melbourne to Japan in December?

Hi team,
I’ve been following your page for about the last year and we have accumulated about 400k qantas points.
Unless I completely looked up the wrong thing - a couple of weeks ago we were searching the Qantas page and found a whole bunch of Business class seats to Tokyo around the 20th December this year and return seats about a month later in January.
Now, today I logged on to actually book the tickets and there’s next to no availability even in economy. The business class seats that are there are with Jetstar (not too keen) and the economy seats seem super expensive (eg 120k points one way).
Can anybody offer some advice on a better way to find some seats - pref business, but economy will definitely be find if none available to Tokyo or Osaka?
We would like to fly Qantas or JAL if possible. I managed for find 3 economy seats on JAL out of Melbourne - but nothing return.
Unfortunately only just got the go ahead from work to take time off, which is why we’ve left our run so late. We were so looking forward to spending xmas/nye in kyoto - but at this rate - I can’t see us doing that without spending 500k in points for some economy tix.

Any advice would be so appreciated!
Thanks!
Ads and Em.

Hi,

For obvious reasons that time is a peak time to travel.

I found the following for Tokyo-Melbourne (1-16 Jan).

4th Jan 4 economy seats

8th Jan 2 business seats

Good luck.

You learned a very important lesson the hard way. When you see availability on dates you want: book first, ask questions later.