This project was funded by the Japanese government and aimed to help Japanese "cores" to establish scientific contacts and research collaborations with the West (a "core being" a number of institutes in a country with a single correspondent for that country). The Japanese core was the Meme Media Lab of Hokkaido University and the non-Japanese cores were: the LRI, Universite Paris Sud, France; the DKI National Institute of AI, Sarrebruck, Germany, and the CS depertment of the University of Alberta, Canada.