CARSTEN GERMIS was born in 1959 in a small village in northern Germany. After school, he joined the navy for a few years. Although he originally dreamed of studying nautics, in 1982 he decided to quit seafaring and the dangers of navigation to study philosophy, political science and economics in Berlin (West) and Hamburg. At the same time, he started writing as a freelancer for the Associated Press in Hamburg. His first job after university was with the Deutscher Depeschen Dienst – a German news agency – in Bonn. There, he developed a taste for writing on economic and fiscal policy. He left Bonn in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, and after the first free elections in East Germany became an adviser for the Ministry of Social Affairs in the federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. That didn’t last long, as he missed his independent life as a journalist. In June 1990, he got a call to work for the Berlin daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. At Der Tagesspiegel, he worked as editor for politics and as a police reporter. He always liked to read mystery novels, especially by hard-boiled American authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. After his divorce, he started to write mystery stories (some are published in German) and for the first time became interested in Japan by reading Japanese mystery novels. In 2001, he became an economics correspondent in Berlin for the Sunday edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Since January 2010, he has been living in Tokyo and reports on Japanese economics for FAZ. His dreams: To learn Japanese and write a Tokyo-based mystery story.

BRIAN FOWLER is managing editor, Japan and Korea, at Bloomberg News, where he has worked since April 2008. Previously, Brian was at Dow Jones Newswires for 14 years, starting as a copy editor in New York and then moving to Tokyo, where he covered the Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance before serving as bureau chief. After a seven-year sojourn in Singapore, where he ran regional economic and fixed-income coverage before managing the 21 Asia-Pacific bureaus for Dow Jones Newswires, Brian returned last year to Japan, where he has lived off and on for11 years, including two years in Kagoshima on the JET program and a year in Osaka. Brian and his wife have three children and one over-stimulated cat.

REGULAR MEMBERS
Carsten Germis, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

REINSTATEMENT (REGULAR MEMBERS)
Brian Fowler, Bloomberg L.P.

PROFESSIONAL/JOURNALIST ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Daniel Leussink, Freelance
Miho Hecq-Cauquil Ogawa, Freelance

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Kevin Yu, PayPal Japan
David Cotterchio, Calyon Capital Markets Asia B.V. Tokyo
Saisuke Ieno, State University of New York
Ryota Hamamoto, Accenture Japan Ltd.
Kazuyuki Ito, Kazuyuki Ito Tax Accountant Office
Kenji Takeda, Riken

REINSTATEMENT (ASSOCIATE MEMBERS)
Kenichi Kuroya, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Ltd.
Shuhei Aida, University of Electro-Communications