It sounds a bit strange that the WL is closed when A1 is showing. It usually has to be A0. Let me check it later. (I am right now away from the software needed to access the system.)
On JL's booking system, I pay 6,000 yen per six months. (Less than 47 USD).
You do not get charged for making any reservations. Reservations and ticketing are two different things.
A ticket number is not a must to make a reservation. You can grab a seat first and then have a travel agent or a carrier issue the ticket. After a reservation is complete, some carriers, most notably CX, may return a message saying the reservation will be cxled unless a ticket number is supplied by XXX (date). Providing a ticket number does secure a seat and usually make it easier to get WL cleared than having a phantom booking without any ticket.
Wow, learning Japanese? It should be easy then. It's just the first few interface pages that are in Japanese.
I just used DONE and made all the reservations by myself, splitting up all the itineraries under separate PNRs. NRT-x/HKG-SIN under one and SIN-HKG under another. But I flew them all in one day. Yes, I confess, it turned out to be a mileage run.
I just didn't want CX to flag me for a strange itineary. I also did similar split itineraries for AA just not to make them feel suspicious.
It really doesn't matter who make a reservation under a certain subclass. JL (or rather one of its subsidiaries -- JL-Sabre venture -- that is running the system) does caution its users about double-booking and they could ban the user from using the system again if found to be making double-booking.
I am flying SFO-LHR with BA and then on to GVA also with BA on DONE it's SFO-x/LHR-GVA (no stopover in LHR) but I split the PNR for the two sectors just to make sure that I get the FFP points for separate programs.
It is quite handy for sure.