Given the long lead time for booking, you should definitely be able to find some deals. One site that sends out emails is https://scottscheapflights.com/ and I find the prices look really good. You don't book through them, they just inform you about prices, and you book with the airline.
It's a lot easier to find deals on return flights than one-way overseas flights.
One web forum I'm on suggested flying one-way from Tokyo to Beijing or Shanghai, and flying home from there, and indeed, if you booked that today, it's only about $1,200 total, but all the affordable flights from Japan to China involve connections in South Korea or Singapore. I suspect the Japan-China flights will come down as time goes on, though.
The big problem is that we're in Regina. There are only so many seats from Vancouver or Calgary to Regina, and they fill up. Getting to Vancouver or Calgary isn't too hard. Finding a convenient connection pair gets trickier the longer you wait. Even yesterday, only one set of flights that Aeroplan offered got us home the same day we arrived from Japan to Canada. All the rest (and there were many) involved overnighting in Vancouver or Calgary, for total journey times in the 30-36-hour range instead of roughly 16 hours like the booking I made.