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Proficiency in English is pivotal for leveraging information and communication technologies, but it holds even greater significance in the realm of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), which is poised as the next digital frontier. However, the dominance of English in benchmarks and training data for large language models (LLMs) exacerbates challenges for individuals and organizations in the developing world, predominantly non-English speakers. Despite the commendable performance of GAI in select developed languages like French, Spanish, and Japanese, it struggles to deliver comparable results in low-resource languages (LRLs) such as Bengali, Hindi, and Swahili. These languages, deprived of adequate online content, face obstacles in training specialized models due to script complexities and limited lexical resources. While countries like Japan and Iceland offer promising models for addressing linguistic challenges, the road ahead necessitates collaborative efforts to develop LLMs tailored for LRLs and rectify linguistic inaccuracies, ensuring inclusive and equitable AI development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The organizational dimension of a today society is often modified by distinct and very specific risk, crisis and/or emergency events. Those aspects are also built culturally by promoting actions, practices and processes typical of the society in which they take place. In the contemporary temporal dimension, we observe not only the risk, but also the social and cultural impacts generated by the crises or emergencies that may result from it. And it is precisely on emergencies, or rather on the way of communicating emergencies in the digital society, that this article focus on, by considering the cases of Japan and Italy to support the reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, young people are becoming increasingly apathetic about politics, while at the same time they are experiencing a rightward leaning and a growing sympathy for totalitarianism and authoritarianism. To understand this contradiction, we need to look at the digital communication environment in which they engage in political discourse. One of the most representative opinion leaders in this regard is Hiroyuki Nishimura. In recent years, Hiroyuki has become widely known as the 'King of Refutation' and is immensely popular among the young generation. He is very active in political and social issues, arguing in a logical and neutral manner. However, despite his enlightened mode of argumentation, his arguments have been perceived as accommodative to totalitarian and authoritarian perceptions. This paper argues that at the heart of this mode of refutation is a process of 'decontextualisation' and 'recontextualisation' which has resulted in reducing the complexity of the issue, making it comprehensible to the majority while oppressing minorities. And this mode of refutation and the processes of 'decontextualisation' and 'recontextualisation' are at the centre of the various digital communication platforms that he operates and that have become hubs of political communication around the world: 2channel, 4chan, Nico Nico Douga and YouTube clips. In this sense, the totalitarianism and rightward leaning of the young generation is not due to a specific ideology but is strongly conditioned by the communication environment. 'Communication totalitarianism' can be used to describe the totalitarianism and right-wing tendencies taking place in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government and their affairs have been recognized with their formal antic and frequently engaged with old-styled decision or action. With the power of social media and internet, things aren't going with traditionalism forever, because now event Japanese embassy also uses creative touch in engaging with Indonesian Citizen in Japan. To perform their task properly, their service is accompanied by colorful cartoonish illustrations whether it's for notification, event announcement, or encouraging Indonesian citizen to do certain action. This kind of communication method by Japanese Embassy for Indonesia can be called as creative public communication. The content analysis allows us to understand that animation isn't only part of entertainment, but it opens a path to effective public communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the smartphone, the production and circulation of digital visual media have become as costless and accessible as audio and text-based communication. It would be challenging to be a contemporary ethnographer without engaging with digital practices which in Japan and China at least, tend towards being highly visual. Digital visual communication is recognised in literature as an effective and accessible form of communication, with an increasing number of studies in the field of digital anthropology, media studies and Internet studies exploring the consequences of digital images on social media. There is a pressing need to understand local forms of visual communication in the digital age, where the visual has become an essential part of daily communication. This article deals particularly with the rise of visual digital communication among older adults in China and Japan. Drawing on 16-month ethnographies conducted simultaneously between 2018 and 2019 in China and Japan, this article contributes to the discussion of visual communication in light of this semiotic shift happening online, which is then contextualised within people's offline lives. The ethnographies in both China and Japan find that, first of all, visual communication via digital media enables more effective and efficient phatic communication and emotion work. In addition, the ethnographies point to a question about 'authenticity' in interpersonal communication. The ethnographies show that in some cases, the deployment of visual communication via the smartphone is not so much about being able to express 'authentic' personal feelings but rather, in being able to effectively establish a digital public façade according to social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract:The post-Cold War context has accompanied the ascent of East Asian economies and consumer markets, as exemplified by China, while Japan's experience has been marked by the struggle with an economic slump after the collapse of the so-called bubble economy. Japan has been actively promoting ‘cool Japan’ instead of the economy, but even more notable is the rise of the Korean Wave. Joined together with political contestation over historical issues, anti-China/Korea sentiments have been growing, as is the accompanying hate-speech movement against resident Koreans in new-millennium Japan. Growing East Asian rivalry along with the relative decline of Japan, the widely shared sense of socio-economic predicament and the upsurge of digital media communications have been conjoined to generate the hunt for proximate enemies – China, Korea, and resident Koreans in Japan – as the object of expressions of hate. How to develop better uses of digital media towards the cultivation of dialogic cultural citizenship is an imperative issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The development of Japan''s broadband Internet access services has been remarkable. However, two main problems have emerged concerning broadband migration: migration from narrowband to broadband services and migration inside broadband services. Focusing on the latter problem, this paper reaches two conclusions. First, in terms of the type of users who initially migrated to the fiber to the home (FTTH) service is analyzed. It is found that income levels, service usage such as motion-picture viewing, and type of residence are important factors determining FTTH subscriptions. Second, the lock-in effects of NTT, which provides both asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) and FTTH, are analyzed. In conclusion, significant lock-in effects exist whose values are measured around JPY 2400 (US$ 21.2). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Digital terrestrial broadcasting in Japan specifies a service profile not only for fixed receivers in the home, but also for personal mobile terminals such as acellular phones and PDAs. Services for personal mobile terminals are expected to become more attractive with sufficient functionality and flexibility by utilizing the network connectivity of mobile terminals. In order to verify the possibilities of digital television broadcasting (DTV) services for personal mobile terminals and clarify technical problems at the commercial level, we developed a prototype mobile terminal capable of receiving digital terrestrial broadcasting in addition to the Internet. This paper describes the assumed DTV service for personal mobile terminals and the technical architecture of the developed mobile terminal with regard to the hardware and the software. Several experiments using the developed mobile terminal were conducted and the performance was evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan was one of the world's early adopters of broadband Internet access technologies, notably ADSL. Although last year it lost its number one global ranking to China, ADSL deployment in Japan continued to grow. This growth has been tied to ever increasing ADSL bandwidths. Centillium Communications has been in the unique position for many years of a major contributor to this rapid growth, pioneering many new technologies in ADSL, with a ringside seat to observe how competition has stimulated some of these technology advances. This article reviews some of the technologies behind the rapid market growth and provides an overview of directions in which these technologies are shaping the future of ADSL in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a multimedia datacasting coding scheme named Broadcast Markup Language (BML), which is used in for both satellite and terrestrial digital broadcasting in Japan. User requirement for datacasting; Web technology standards; Extension of tag sets; Extension of cascading style sheet; Script extensions.

In this paper, a typical mobile communication environment is assumed and the eigenvalue distributions of the correlation matrix of a MIMO channel with the spatial correlation of the multipath taken into account are studied by simulation. Based on this study, a simple method is proposed for accurately deriving the probability distribu- tion of the largest eigenvalue of the correlation matrix. The proposed approximation equation is compared with simu- lation results and good agreement is obtained. In order to understand the information transmission capability of MIMO in a multipath fading environment with spatial correlation, the proposed equation is used for studying the effect of the spatial correlation on channel capacity. Finally, the digital transmission characteristics (relationship be- tween the BER and the CNR) with correlation taken into account are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new neural network (the concepts-of-sentences associative neural network, CSANN) which performs memory and recall of sentences represented by a semantic network, as an approach toward natural language processing. The semantic network is represented in terms of the triples representation of concepts. The triples representation of concepts consists of concepts linked by relations in sentences represented by natural language. CSANN handles sentence data, which are difficult to handle since the data size is not unique, by decomposing the data into triples representations of concepts and integrating them into the semantic network format. It is verified by computer simulation that the proposed network can store sentences and recall sentences even if the input information is incomplete. Thus, the effectiveness of the proposed network in natural language processing is demonstrated. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 34(11): 43–54, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10476 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple and efficient available-bit-rate (ABR) control algorithm is described that fairly allocates bandwidth to each virtual channel (VC) in large-scale networks. In ABR control, the peak cell rate (PCR) and minimum cell rate (MCR) are specified at call set-up, and the cell-emission rate of each VC is controlled between them based on the explicit rate (ER) calculated from the traffic conditions at the ATM switches. Conventional control algorithms that do not use per-VC accounting allocate the same ER to all VCs. Therefore, if there is a VC with a PCR lower than the allocated ER, the control algorithm may not utilize the bandwidth effectively. A VC with an MCR higher than the allocated ER may suffer persistent congestion. Furthermore, algorithms that do not use per-VC accounting cannot achieve weighted bandwidth allocation. However, it is hard to implement algorithms that do use per-VC accounting in large-scale networks. The described ABR control algorithm makes it possible to maintain high throughput under PCR/MCR constraints and to achieve weighted bandwidth allocation based on the traffic conditions, without using per-VC accounting. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 83(9): 44–56, 2000 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of its low loss and superior power handling capability, the waveguide filter cannot have broad bandwidth due to the strong frequency dependence of the reactance values for coupling of the cavity resonators and the guide wavelength. To achieve a broadband design of the iris-coupled waveguide bandpass filter with the Chebyshev function as the transfer function, the susceptance value of the inductive iris is optimized by specifying the ideal zero frequency of the reflection. Based on this method, a diplexer is trial fabricated and a broadband diplexing characteristic is realized. In addition, agreement with numerical results is demonstrated, confirming the effectiveness and validity of the method. The tested diplexer has a VSWR of less than 1.24 and an isolation of more than 53 dB at passband bandwidths of 32 and 7% relative to the wavelength. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 83(7): 59–67, 2000 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the Japanese telelcommunications market and its direction by referring to key statistical indicators. Details on the Japanese telecommunications market which is entering the digital era and is experiencing its second phase of competition; Factors that contributed to the digital era and second phase of competition; When the Japanese market was liberalized.

This paper proposes a method for precisely estimating sinusoidal frequency using five samples. The estimation procedure is implemented by interpolating the impulse location between DFT results. Five samples are used because two complex components are available in the DFT results. However, an estimation method which uses four samples and is called Prony's approximation method is known in the literature. To derive interpolation formulas for six or more samples is more complex. In this paper, strict estimation formulas and their simplified versions arc deduced from the DFTs of five samples. The frequency estimation error is also discussed with a computer-simulated experiment which shows a I percent r.m.s. error at a signal-to-noise ratio of 30 dB. This method may be applicable for representing frequency in a direct binary form which can be processed by simple operations such as addition, exclusive-OR, and sign extractions form the calculated value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method of realizing an adaptive normalized ARMA lattice filter. This filter was proposed in a previous paper and can be realized with an arbitrary ARM A order and with all the lattice coefficients less than one. Furthermore, these coefficients are equal, so the structure is simplified. The adaptive realization method proposed in this paper retains these features. In addition, we perform spectral estimation of a time-varying signal with frequency weighting and model identification of an unknown input system. In our paper we describe an experiment with a real speech signal to prove that our algorithm can be used for frequency-weighted spectral estimation. The use of real data to perform spectral estimation has not been attempted in other references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the use of very long baseline interferometer (VLBI) devices has increased in the geodesy and radio astronomy communities. To enable these devices to pick out very small variations, it is desirable to increase the sensitivity of the detection of the VLBI. For observing quasars, it is beneficial to increase the observation bandwidth and improve the sensitivity of detection. However, for such wide bandwidth systems, giga-hertz-order sampling high-speed A/D converters are necessary and the technology for achieving these devices is not yet developed. In this work, we developed, using Si-bipolar LSI processes (SST-1B), a 4-Gsample/s 2-bit ADC LSI and created a high-speed ADC system. We evaluated the loss in this system due to phase stability, sampling jitter, and the uncertainty region of the comparator of the LSI to evaluate the coherence of the VLBI. We used a frequency transformer device and a picosecond phase comparator as the measurement device for measuring the phase stability of the gigahertz-order ADC system. From the measurement results, we determined that the Allen standard deviation over 1-s of integration time was 3.6 × 10-13, the sampling jitter was 13.4 ps, and the comparator uncertainty was 20 mV. For a wide bandwidth burst mode VLBI observation system with an observation frequency of 230 GHz, a coherence loss of 7.6 percent was observed. We then demonstrated the operation of the ADC system by detecting real radio astronomical observation spectra using this device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the coupled-line digital frequency multipliers which have been discussed for the impulse train, their output responses are presented for the periodically isolated pulses considered as time-limited incident signals. In this paper, periodic Gaussian pulse trains are treated as an example. In addition, the physical meaning is given for the nonnegative constant which is determined by the relationship between the reflection and transmission coefficients as the transfer function of the circuit. By means of this constant, it is shown that the attenuation constant of the discrete frequency component passing the circuit is minimum. Similar to the case of unit impulse train input, the input frequency components are discrete at an equal interval on the frequency axis. The amplitude is determined by the Fourier transform of the isolated pulse constituting the periodic pulse train. Since the input frequency components are discrete, simulation of the output response requires only the sampled values of the frequency characteristics of the circuit. Since the Fourier transform of a Gaussian waveform is Gaussian, it is possible to determine the transmission frequency range in which most of the energy of the Gaussian pulse train is concentrated. Although the characteristic of the distributed circuit degrades as the frequency is increased, an almost desirable output can be obtained if the frequency characteristics are satisfied within a transmission frequency bandwidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ringing choke converter is widely used as an electronic power supply with a small capacity. A number of works have been published on the feedback systems for adjustment of output voltage. NO sufficient analysis, however, has been undertaken on the static and dynamic characteristics. In this paper, a nonlinear differential equation describing the basic operation is first derived. Next, from a small signal model obtained from this differential equation, a loop transfer function of the converter is derived. Further, the transfer function for an input variation and a load variation under regulation have been derived. As a result, the characteristic equation becomes linear and it is shown that the converter is extremely stable. The dynamic characteristic parameters of the ringing choke converter are found different from those of the conventional reactor current discontinuity mode converter. Both the gain bandwidth product of the loop transfer function and that of the transfer function of the output voltage fluctuations for the input voltage fluctuations under regulation are smaller in the ringing choke converter than in the reactor current discontinuous mode converter. It is found that the ringing choke converter is less susceptible to the input voltage fluctuations and operates with a greater stability than the reactor current discontinuous mode converter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) standardized in International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication Standard Sector (ITU-T) applies a new multiplexing method using a pointer that indicates a tributary location in the SDH frame. The location of the SDH frame heads received from several lines is adjusted at interface circuits to facilitate the multiplexing process in the SDH equipment. Since the frame head locations of input signal differ from the output signal, pointer values are attached to the output signals. The pointer conversion of each tributary is performed independently of each other. Therefore the pointer values of tributaries transported on the same line might be different from each other after the conversion even if these values are the same. Hence large amounts of buffer memory would be required at the destination point to provide a transport service utilizing multiple virtual containers (VCs). This paper proposes a new pointer conversion method that keeps the pointer value differences unchanged between tributaries multiplexed in an SDH frame. This method allows multiple VC transport service to be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When metallic telecommunication lines carrying digital signals are laid adjacent to ac supply lines in an office or a house, then the noise generated by the ac supply lines is induced on the telecommunication lines and the quality of transmission may be degraded. To calculate the induced voltage generated directly between the cores of a telecommunication line requires accurate values of the coupling admittance or coupling impedance between the two lines corresponding to the cable construction and the problem becomes very complicated. This paper proposes a simple method of estimating the voltage induced between the cores of a telecommunication line when the telecommunication line is laid adjacent to an ac supply line. The amount of coupling from the primary circuit with an open-circuited terminal and with a short-circuited terminal to the secondary circuit is measured. Using this value, the characteristics of the induced voltage corresponding to an arbitrary value of terminal impedance of the primary or secondary circuit simply are estimated. The validity of the estimation method was confirmed by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the decision feedback transversal-combining (TC) diversity reception system in the digital mobile communication, and describes experimentally the interference cancelling characteristics of decision feedback equalizer-type (DFE) TC diversity reception through laboratory tests. Three kinds of interference signals are considered: the intersymbol interference (ISI). the cochannel interference (CCI), and the adjacent channel interference (ACI). The exponentially weighted RLS, which executes the least-square method m readtime, is employed m the adaptive control of the combining coefficients. It is shown first that the method for equalization and diversity combining can be classified into the TC and the metric combining (MC), among which TC has the linear interference cancelling effect. By 40 kbit/s quadriphase-shift keying (QPSK) transmission experiments under Rayleigh fading condition, the following properties of TC are shown compared to MC: (1) In ISI, dominant condition in double path model, the average BER performance for average Eb/No values over 20 dB; (2) For CCI, dominant condition BER performance of TC is better than that of MC by 5 dB in average CIR at average BER of 10-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2lst century, 10∼30 Mbps video services will be the main traffic services of B-ISDN. Therefore, bandwidth control is effective for dividing a 150-Mbps line into the call bandwidths. A shared buffer-type ATM switch with this function can be achieved by queueing call by call and by reading out cells from the queues according to the bandwidth control table sequence. When the traffic is random with utilization of 0.9, the switch with 128∼512 queues on the 4000-cell shared buffer has sufficiently small cell loss characteristics. Multiqueueing technology is provided by embedded RAMs which point to the first addresses and last addresses of the queues. Queue length control, which limits each queue length, for multiquoueing is provided by the embedded RAMs. A one-board switch with 128 queues on a 4000-cell shared buffer is developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) become more available for home use, it is expected that the demand for broadcast services, e.g., video distribution from a center to end terminals, will increase. Thus, in the local switching system, the number of output subscriber lines is much larger than the number of input trunk lines. Therefore, an asymmetric broadcast ATM switching network is needed for this service. However, most of the switching networks already proposed In this paper, an asymmetric switching network is realized by partitioning the output and by using existing symmetric switching networks. Furthermore, the size of symmetric switching networks which are used as parts is reduced by placing concentrators in the front. This decreases the total amount of hardware. Since excessive concentration invites cell loss, the relation between the hardware-reduction effect and the cell-loss characteristic also is studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated train access protocol for a high-speed ring network is proposed in this paper. Using the concept of the train, synchronous and asynchronous traffic is integrated. To consider the fundamental performance, the periodicity of the channel activity is found in the steady state, and the cycle length is derived. On the basis of this cycle length, the tram length, channel utilization, and access interval of each traffic are derived. To characterize the proposed protocol more clearly, it is compared with fiber distributed data interface (FDDI), which uses the timed token scheme. As a result, it is shown that the proposed protocol and FDDI have the same high channel utilization. On the mean access interval of the asynchronous traffic, FDDI shows the increase character with the target token rotation time (TTRT), while the proposed protocol shows the decrease character with the number of asynchronous frames contained in the train γ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increasing interest recently in code division multiplex (CDM) systems. The authors reported a CDM system using pseudo-orthogonal Manchester-coded M-sequence pairs. For this CDM system, the effective energy per bit in the received signals is reduced (M + 1)/2M times as much as the transmitted energy per bit. Moreover, the bit error rate (BER) of the 3M-plex system, which uses the ‘a-chip-shift’ multiplex operation alone, does not converge on zero even if Eb/No increases. This paper proposes a CDM system using Manchester-coded orthogonal sequences which consists of an M-sequence M chip and an additional chip. The proposed 3M-plex system is a combination of the ‘a-chip-shift’ multiplex operation and the amplitude multiplex operation. The proposed systems do not have loss of the effective received signal energy. The BER of the proposed systems converges to zero with increasing Eb/No. Moreover, the proposed system out performs the Manchester-coded multilevel transmission system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An end-to-end error recovery scheme is a promising way to obtain low end-to-end delays in packet switching networks. However, a too-short timeout interval may cause unnecessary packet retransmissions even when a packet is transmitted successfully to the receiver. On the other hand, a longer timeout interval may introduce large end-to-end delay when a packet is actually lost. Thus, it becomes important to determine an appropriate timeout period in the scheme. This paper analyzes a tandem queueing network system with blocking due to finite capacity in intermediate nodes and investigates the effect of the timeout period on the end-to-end delay performance. It is found that there exists the timeout period minimizing the mean packet transmission delay in the end-to-end error recovery scheme. The delay performance between end-to-end and link-by-link error recovery schemes also is compared and it is found that the delay performances of these schemes are influenced significantly by the node-to-node delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, propagation delay measurements were carried out in Tokyo (metropolitan urban area) where high rises and other buildings are concentrated on a plane and in Kofu (urban area adjacent to mountains) surrounded by tall mountains. The delay characteristics such as delay spread and wave numbers were found. The principal results obtained in these areas are as follows: (1) In a metropolitan urban area, i.e., Tokyo, (a) the average delay spread in a high-density residential district is less than about 1 µs and the delay profile consists of a group of direct waves arriving directly from the base station; and (b) the average delay spread in a location with high-rise buildings is also less than 1 µs and the average number of arriving waves is about five with the delay profile consisting of a direct wave group and a reflected wave group from reflecting object. (2) In an urban area adjacent to mountains, i.e., Kofu, the average delay spread is less than about 2 µs and the average number of arriving waves is four. The delay profile consists of a direct wave group and a reflected wave group. The level of the reflected wave group decreases exponentially with the delay time in the case of reflection from buildings, while the level is almost constant within a certain range of delay time and is of a spread shape (rectangular) in the case of reflection from mountains. From these measured results, a simple propagation model consisting of a direct wave group and a reflected wave group is proposed. It is shown that the distance dependence of the delay spread has a peak between the base station and a reflecting object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to describe the utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a digital infrastructure concerning disaster countermeasures in Japan. Specifically, the study introduced development cases of the systems integrating social media and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and presented the utilization potential as a digital infrastructure. Additionally, taking up Twitter as a familiar digital infrastructure, the study also presented its utilization potential based on the case of the heavy-rain disaster in Western Japan in 2018. As a result, due to the close relationship between the reality and virtual spaces, the issue is how to make the information circulating in the virtual space efficiently and effectively aid in the rescue and support activities in the reality space. The above systems are effective in order to solve such an issue, because these can efficiently consolidate the essential information on the digital map of Web-GIS. Additionally, it is necessary to set rules for the utilization of social media, and sift through information and share only the necessary information to the affected local governments and those involved in the rescue and support activities. Furthermore, various information communication methods including verbal calls in addition to ICT are necessary especially for people who are vulnerable to information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on Tokyo Tower's 50th year and its impending replacement as downtown Tokyo's iconic landmark. Completed in 1958 at the cost of ¥2.8 billion, the Tokyo Tower stands 333 meters. The 50 year old structure will reportedly be superceded by a new digital transmission tower in the Oshiage district of the Sumida Ward that will rise 610 meters high and constructed for ¥50 billion. An upgrade of the tower's facilities is allegedly being considered by its owner Nippon Television City Corp.

Explores the potential innovation in the convergence of the Japanese media content industry and Japanese culture. Method used in creating the digital space collaborating with traditional performing arts; Idea behind the integration of cellular telephones into the artist's work; Components of a generative, emotional and interactive artwork.

Information on the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council Asia-Pacific First Annual Conference held on July 11 to 14, 2006 at Makuhari, Japan is presented. The conference assessed the market potential of FTTH in the Asia-Pacific region. It featured exhibitions on broadband access services, live entertainment over FTTH, and remote education service.