ANA is really cheap to asia. I just booked a business class ticket for 93k miles from lax to japan.

you can open many amex cards to get points and transfer to ana or chase cards and transfer to virgin to book ana.

but a lot of times i'll book korean air because they allow stopover in seoul. so typically ill stay in seoul for a week then fly somewhere like hong kong and its all the same price as if you just flew to korea.