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USDJPY on a London watchlist sounds odd. Tokyo is winding down when London opens, so you'd expect a quiet pair. In practice it often isn't, and the reason is usually yields.

What to check over a few weeks of mornings:

• The 08:00 to 09:00 range compared with EURUSD's. Compare in pip value, not raw pips, since a USDJPY pip is worth less at current prices.
• US 10-year Treasury yields by 09:00. Once European desks are in, yields often start to move, and USDJPY tends to follow.
• Spread after 08:05 on your account.

A practical rule that follows from that relationship: check yields before trading. On flat yield mornings treat USDJPY as a range pair; on moving yield mornings (say more than 3 basis points by 09:00) consider breakouts in the yield direction only. Log both cases to see whether the split holds for you.

One caution: Japanese officials' comments on the yen can hit at any time, and the reaction is fast. Half the usual size is a sensible default.

Anyone else trade yen in the European morning?

I trade USDJPY in the London morning most days, and the yields point matches what I see. When the US ten-year starts moving after European desks come in, yen follows it within minutes, and on those mornings the pair often has a cleaner trend than EURUSD does. On days when yields sit flat it tends to chop inside a twenty to thirty pip box until New York.

The comparison in pip value was an eye-opener for me when I first did it. I had assumed USDJPY was the quieter pair because the raw pip count looked similar, but once I converted to dollars per lot the actual money range was smaller than I thought, so my targets had been a little greedy.

I also run it at reduced size, for the reason you gave. I got caught once by a Ministry of Finance comment around 08:40 that moved the pair sixty pips in a couple of minutes, and since then I never hold a full position on yen during the European morning without a hard stop already in the market.