Asia has pretty much always been on my travel bucket list, but there had never really been a good enough excuse to spend the money to get there.

Until recently.

My husband had made it his goal to complete what were then the five world marathons within five years. In his fifth and final year, as he was ran what he thought would be his last race of the series in London, then the announcement was made that Tokyo would join the list.

And suddenly we had reason to go.

Of course the timing wasn’t perfect — we had just up and moved halfway across the country, spent tons on a trip to South America and were now expecting a child. But on the other hand, we didn’t want to wait much longer. It felt like a now or never situation. Traveling frugally is always a goal of mine, but now more than ever we needed to save as much money as possible on this trip.

When all was said and done, we spent 10 days in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima, and only spent about $4,000 for the both of us, including flights and accommodation. Here’s some of ways we made it work.

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Step 1: Book flights and accommodation as far in advance as possible.

How it helped: Since we were stuck on our travel dates (they obviously had to revolve around the marathon date), we couldn’t be flexible, but we did know well in advance when the race was taking place, so we were able to start tracking flights about a year out and when a great deal came up, we pounced.

We purchased our tickets in March of 2015 for a trip in February of 2016, which some might say is crazy, but it worked well for us. If you’re worried about things coming up to derail a trip planned that far in advance, book travel insurance as well. (We went with World Nomads, which has great prices.)

The other thing that worked in our favor was that the end of February/beginning of March isn’t exactly peak travel time for Japan. We were a bit early for the famous cherry blossoms, and the weather can be unpredictable (although we luckily had no issues there), so if you can decide to book during a less popular time, that will help you save big, too.

Step 2: If you love hotels, at least combine your hotel stays with some apartment rentals, as well.

How it helped: Again, for us our stay at an Airbnb apartment in Tokyo happened by necessity (even at almost a year in advance, all the decent hotels near the starting line of the race were sold out).

However, it turned out to be a blessing, since a stay at an apartment afforded us other cost-cutting options (more on those later), and it turned out to be way cheaper than what the hotels were offering. In fact, our cute little Airbnb abode — which was in a great location for sight-seeing and was super close to the start line of the marathon — cost us about $100 per night, compared to the hotel we booked in Kyoto, which cost about $189 per night. That’s a pretty good savings.

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Step 3: Make as many meals as you can.

How it helped: Having the apartment helped as well because we were able to make breakfast for ourselves every single morning in Tokyo, and we even ended up making dinner one night. Of course eating out is one of the great pleasures of travel, but I honestly felt like we did plenty of that, while still saving a ton of cash on similar foods we probably would have eaten out for breakfast anyway.