Mr. Mason is a cum-laude graduate of Cornell University's Department of Asian Studies where as an undergraduate he concentrated on Japanese studies and urban anthropology.  His honor's thesis, entitled "Japanese Society and Trains", was a study of the train's influence on Japanese culture from Meiji to the late twentieth century.  As an undergraduate he completed Cornell's prestigious FALCON (Full-year Asian Language CONcentration) program in Japanese and later served as a teaching assistant and the Program Coordinator.  As a graduate student his main interest was Chinese and Japanese pedagogy.  His affiliation with FALCON and Cornell's Japanese Teacher Training Workshop has been an essential element in his study of Japanese pedagogy.  Mr. Mason also has experience in university administration; he spent two years as an accounts representative in Cornell's East Asia Program and as an administrator in the Department of Asian Studies.  Mr. Mason, who speaks Japanese and is conversant in Chinese, spent two years as a homeroom teacher at a high school in central Japan--a rare position for a foreigner to attain.  At the same time he taught English at a university north of Tokyo, where he still holds the rank of assistant professor.  His hobbies are studying Chinese and Japanese, cycling, photography, and learning the names of NHK announcers (Japan's national broadcasting network). When he is not in the air above the Pacific, he spends his time between Lunenburg, MA,  and Utsunomiya, Japan.