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Photo: Winter snow at Yamasa - Original studio in foreground. Yamasa II building at the rear.

The Yamasa Multimedia Studio has continued to expand and now occupies part of the ground floor of Aoi Hall adjoining the International Office and the Radio station, as well as the original building located directly across the road from the Yamasa II building.

The original building is now divided into two sections, with one half devoted to the Infogallery project - a community based NGO involving the Yamasa Institute, local universities, Hattori Foundation, Okazaki Chamber of Commerce and citizens groups that discusses local planning and social + community infrastructure. Although the interior is high-tech, the exterior design of the house has been left for the most part as per the original construction - which may be why it is better known amongst students as "The Shack".

All of the staff at the studio are full-time and include programmers, audio/video engineers and graphic designers. The majority of the staff work in the Aoi Hall building. Some of the students also do short internships or work part-time here.

Photo: Video editing, DTP and graphic design inside the studio. (Click to enlarge)

The studio is where the websites and databases of the Yamasa Institute and the Radio station are constructed and maintained. We are also usually kept busy producing multilingual homepages and databases for affiliated universities and partner organizations as well as all of the archiving for www.okazaki.fm and www.yamasa.tv, development of the on-demand learning resources for the Online Center for Japanese Studies and maintenance of student email systems.

The studio is also increasingly producing learning aides, an online dictionary, databases, video content and other streaming media for Japanese language education professionals around the world. As far as we know, the Yamasa Institute is the only specialist Japanese language education program provider with these production capabilities. Partners for co-production are always being sought - if your university or company is operating similar facilities please contact us.

Current projects include:

• The ACCESS Databases project.

  These are Japanese/English bilingual databases (the interface is in six languages, but the data is currently only published in two languages) for foreign students providing detailed information on...

  • Universities - entry requirements for each faculty of every Japanese university and graduate school.
    
  • Scholarships - eligibility, remuneration and application processes for financial aid.
    
  • Internships - location, eligibility and contact details.

  These projects are funded by the Hattori Foundation (est.1919) and are intended to ensure that students no longer miss out on valuable opportunites simply because there was no centralized online resource. The studio is currently looking for partners for co-production of Chinese, Korean, German and Spanish versions of these databases.

• Online Center for Japanese Studies support project.

  The multimedia studio is particularly committed to the development of genuinely multilingual online/on-demand learning programs and support infrastructure. Most Japanese language learning software is either offline (CD-ROM's etc), or is only available with translations in one language only, or is not designed to be an integrated part of a rigorous curriculum such as that taught by the ACJS.

  A full-time project team is currently working with Yamasa's faculty in the development of the "Online Center for Japanese Studies" and the Online Dictionary. As of 2002, Yamasa is the only center providing JSL (Japanese as a Second Language) and JFL (Japanese as a Foreign Language) programs via distance learning that has APJLE accredition. From the beginning of the instructional design, it has been a key objective to provide a high quality program fully integrated with the programs taught in Okazaki, so that transfer credit to the Aichi Center for Japanese Studies would be possible.

  LIVE WEBCAM (Click to enlarge)

• FM Okazaki Community Radio.

  The radio station broadcasts on 10 watts on 7.63FM - its footprint covers about 600,000 people in the Eastern Mikawa region of Aichi Prefecture. Our studio provides audio archiving and database support - enabling live streaming and on demand downloads so that language learners can listen to modern contemporary Japanese. The local site (Japanese) is www.763.fm

• Okazaki Guide.

  This is a new database supported community portal to provide online resources for local community groups, NGO's and small businesses. Perhaps the most useful component for those planning to visit Okazaki is the growing city guide.

The technical expertise expected of a full service multimedia developer is put to full use here. Inside the studio itself a range of platforms and operating systems in use as well as a full range of scanners, high resolution printers as well as all of the associated infrastructure required for Yamasa's 6 working languages (Chinese, English, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish). The high speed servers are kept elsewhere in an Internet Data Center, Yamasa's internet access point is in another building.

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