I have been on and off this site. I initially returned to add Wikidata ID to entries. Quite a few of my edits pertain to Japanese cinema. I'm attempting to add accurate information to this site. Sometimes this is not straightforward for a number of reasons.

Example one: To my understanding, the term "gaffer" is primarily a Hollywood credit and not typically used in modern Japanese cinema. If one looks at the profiles of crew members on professional sites, they'll usually call themselves "lighting designer" or "lighting director". For the credit "照明" or "照明監督" I'm choosing to use the credit "lighting director" because it evinces the fact that this person is head of lighting. For the credit "照明助手", I wish there was a term simply called "lighting assistant" available.

Example two: Assistant director credits. This system is also different in Japanese cinema and seems to vary depending on production size and genre. Terms like "First Assistant Director" and "Second Assistant Director" are Hollywood credits that signify a particular set of duties. So I don't like to use those credits on Japanese films. For the credit "助監督" I'm choosing to use the credit "Assistant Director". For the credit "監督助手" or similar, at the moment I'm using the credit "Assistant Director Trainee" because it seems to be the only term available at the moment to reflect hierarchy and the fact that they're not the top credited "助監督" assistant. In reality that credit isn't for a trainee; it simply means the person is a lesser AD. Proposed solution: Create a credit called "Chief Assistant Director" that corresponds to "助監督"; then, "監督助手" or similar can be added as "Assistant Director" which will create uniformity throughout credits.

There are other cases of this in other departments, but it seems redundant to give more examples. This is something worth thinking about in the long term as people are attempting to add more credits to films, which are sometimes from online resources that could disappear at the drop of a hat.

A frustration on this site is people steamrolling over edits by copying from IMDb or other pages like that. Another frustration is the use of auto-translation for titles, names, etc. and guessing the correct readings of these things. This is not reliable. For online resources to find hiragana readings of names, I like Japanese Wikipedia. I also use a site called https://thetv.jp/person/, which is pretty reliable, although in a few cases it's proven to be incorrect versus CV provided by an actor or studio. If I am unsure, I add the name without romanizing it.

When in doubt about credits, the actual credits included in the film should be one of the first places to check.