I suggest you hone your GF skills (while, noting that some airlines aren't listed) and get in the habit of monitoring different North American gateways and maybe also vary your starting points a little (i.e. throw in some that are known for good fares).

Also figure out which routes are flown by LCCs and when they are running specials; e.g. Zip Air was dropping really low fares on LAX-TYO last summer and some other airlines matched them. Of course, availing of things like that can seriously contort your schedule, and might not even save you much in the end when you consider positioning flights and and maybe an extra hotel night or two.

Finally, I always at least attempt to use miles (before even surveying the revenue fare market) for all of my personal and semi-personal trips because I have boatloads and they're obviously a depreciating asset. If I can find saver business class on AA (60k to Japan/Korea and 70k to the rest of East Asia*), I grab that. I look at United too, but transpacs are waste of mileage in their program, for the most part. And, Delta (the least valuable currency of the lot) is okay wrt flights that don't touch North America (e.g. Asia-Europe is good).

ETA: 80k to Japan in F is my favorite AA award of all, but the price jumps to 110k if you pass into the other zone, so when I use these, I typically buy my onward ticket (usually to China or HK) with cash, which isn't super expensive (I'm fine with most of the LCCs for 2-3 hour jaunts).