It does not appear to me that you fly enough butt-in-seat miles to achieve mid-level status. I don't think that you are going to be getting a lot of those JAL complimentary upgrades that they offer to the higher tiers. It sounds like you might want to go to the ANA forum and discuss availability of miles upgrades LAX-Japan. Same with UA (or maybe US) for LAX-NTC. What might work well for you would be a credit card that earned ANA miles, and earn UA miles for flights. That would give you some of each for upgrades.