GAVIN BLAIR came to Japan 11 years ago to study and began his writing career working part-time for a Japanese magazine in 2000. Blair now contributes news stories and predominately business-related features to newspapers, Web sites and magazines in the U.K., U.S., Hong Kong, Ireland and Japan.

LAWRENCE CISAR is a certified parliamentarian with teaching credentials from the American Institute of Parliamentarians, and a Registered Parliamentarian from the National Association of Parliamentarians. He is also a language teacher with a doctorate in education and has been teaching in Japan for 35 years.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON is a Tokyo-based journalist and musician (www.myspace.com/cjinasia), and is author of Siamese Dreams and upcoming Japan novel The Women of Wa.

ANTHONY ROWLEY has been Tokyo correspondent of The Business Times of Singapore since 1993 and is the Japan-based Field Editor for Oxford Analytica. He has written on the economy and finance in the U.K., Southeast Asia and Japan since 1968 for a variety of publications, including The Times of London and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

RICHARD SMITH, a 10-year member of the FCCJ, was for two years editor-in-chief of the Number 1 Shimbun in its previous newspaper format, bringing it to full in-house publication except for printing. He now covers Japanese and South Korean trade and agriculture for media in Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States.

JIM TREECE is a former FCCJ president. He currently is Industry Editor for Automotive News, based in Detroit.

JON WATTS is the Asia Environment Correspondent for The Guardian. A 41-year-old London-born graduate of Manchester University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, he reported on Japan for seven years before taking up his post in Beijing in August 2003. His career includes coverage of the Asian financial crisis 1997-98, the G8 summit in Okinawa in 2000, the South Korea-Japan World Cup 2002, the Tsunami disaster in 2005, the Sichuan earthquake and the Beijing Olympics of 2008. Before his employment by The Guardian, he previously worked as a freelance contributor to Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The South China Morning Post, The New Statesman and The Asahi Shimbun, as well as filming, writing and directing news programs on China and North Korea for BBC Newsnight, CNN and Channel 4 News. He was president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China 2008-2009 and was vice president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan 2001-2003.