Welcome to Hokkaido! - Except Koreans
By Yasuda Yukihiro
July 5, 2008, 00:09

INTERNATIONAL MEETING FOR VIDEO ACTIVISTS
Host: G8 Media Networks Video Unit

■Make a new action by "People With a Video Camera" !

Hello every video activist and the press from all over the world.

Many of us will see each other many time. Let's meet as "People With a Video Camera" over any borders.

The purpose of this meeting is attempting communication, sharing our experiences or skills and thinking a solution of several accident and trouble.

■ Basic skill of Japanese law about situation of making films and answering the police

Multilingual (translation) Unit
We are a team of translators of the G8 Media Network. We translate news and video created by Japanese citizen journalists primarily into English and other languages. We also translate information in foreign languages into Japanese. 　
We welcome translation volunteers of any languages. Please contact us as follows:
(translation) Unit
・Contact Translation Unit : SUDO Shoko <shokosudo@yahoo.co.jp>
Please send a message with your name, e-mail address and languages you can translate, to the above e-mail address.

2nd, June, we, G8 Media Network and CMC Sapporo Committee, held press conference at the press room in Hokkaido local government building and announced the sites for the Media Center for independent/alternative media.

We will prepare three "Media Centers" in Sapporo city, the Clark Hall in the campus of Hokkaido Univ., ex International Guest House at Tenjinyama and two floors in a private building near the center of the city.
Those sites will be used as press room, studio, conference room and workrooms.

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS!

Are you interested in activities concerning international exchange, language interpreting/translating, citizen journalism or citizens' media? Join us today. We "G8 Civil Media Center, Sapporo" are now looking for peers who can play role with us to help and manage interpersonal communications in multilingual situations, and to put out information in various media formats.

12th Apr., lawyers concerning human rights declare human rights watch network on G8 Summit.
The G8 Summit will be held at Lake Toya in Hokkaido and other events are scheduled until July. Not only VIPs from foreign countries will come to Japan during this period, many social movements and NGOs are preparing various events. Japanese police and the security officers are becoming very nervous on their activities for fear of "violent anti-globalism movement" as well as "terror."

27th, Mar., our Video Unit members starts their video site.
The name of the site is: G8 Media Network TV and the URL is http://tv.g8medianetwork.org.
Any member of the unit is able to use the site.

The leader of the unit, Yutaka Tsuchiya said "We will publish short video clips on G8 continuously. During G8 Summit period, we'll cover various 'events' by people and NGOs. Especially, we are building English translation team so that we can publish movies with English, and hopefully also with other languages, subtitles quickly for foreign people."

On 16th, Mar., Shimin Media Center Sapporo Prep Group(SMCSPG) held the symposium named "Independent Media beyond Borders."

SMCSPG is a Sapporo based media group and they have been trying to build a media center for independent media/groups. The aim of the symposium was let people living in Sappro know the meaning and the purpose of the center.

Mainstream media also interested in the event. NHK Sapporo and Mainichi Newspaper reported the symposium.

G8 Action Network, a network of social movements in Japan, announced international preparatory meeting to discuss over the activities during the 2008 G8 Summit.
The prep meeting will be held in March 7-11 in Tokyo inviting various international social movements including media activists. See the documents from G8 Action Network for detail.
Leading media activists from G8 Media Network will attend the meeting to share information and experiences on the activities. We, Japanese media activists, expect to meet you at the meeting.