Project Updates

Discover Nikkei Project Updates

We are working on a major redesign of the Discover Nikkei website, along with new features and expanded functionality! Our team is working hard on many major changes that will be rolling out over the next year. Here are just a few of the exciting new changes we will be releasing soon:

A complete redesign of the entire site that we will be releasing section by section
Integration of Google Translate options
A new and improved tagging system that will make finding content of interest more effective, regardless of language
Ability to create accounts and log in using your Facebook and Google accounts
Improved user profile pages
Improved online events calendar

We would love your feedback on the new changes! Please email us at editor@DiscoverNikkei.org with your comments. We would also really appreciate if you can report any problems using the new features and pages.

We will be providing updates on this page as we work on and unveil these exciting new features. Check back often to find out what’s new and in progress!

April 11, 2024

A new day and more exciting changes to Discover Nikkei!

Check out our redesigned homepage and Journal! Some significant changes to point out:

Mobile friendly—The new templates have mobile-friendly versions.

Google Translated articles—Almost all of the articles that did not previously have translations have been translated by Google Translate, giving you a good approximation of what the stories are about. Machine translated content will have an alert message and we are adding machine translations for most of our site.

Canonical Tags—We are really putting the new canonical tags to extensive use with the articles (please see my previous post explaining how the tag aliases and implied tags work). If you are interested in helping us add more relevant tags to content or would like to help us in other ways, we invite you to join our volunteer team!

As with the other sections, there are a few things that we are planning to update, but please let us know if you have any feedback on these changes—in particular the mobile-friendly templates, language icons, and canonical tags. We would really appreciate it!

Stay tuned for much more to come!

April 10, 2024

We launched the fresh, new look for the Interviews section yesterday! In addition, you will also see other changes that will significantly impact how users can read and find content, regardless of language, throughout our site.

New Interviews pages—A clean, modern interface and mobile-friendly pages! Thanks to Waka Ninohira for getting the new templates completed. There are still a few more minor tweaks and refinements that we are planning, but we would love to get your feedback on the new layouts, and especially, let us know if you run into any problems or confusion.

Google Translate—We have added machine translations for most of the articles and interview transcripts that don’t have vetted, official translations. Machine-translated content will have a warning/alert message.

New language icons—You will find the new language icons on the redesigned Interviews pages that determine which language version is the original language, which are official translations, and which were done via Google Translate. We are still tweaking the text and colors, but please let us know if it makes sense / is helpful.

Canonical tags—The Interviews are the first time we’re publicly using our new canonical tags system! A LOT of work has gone into replacing our old tagging system with one that (hopefully) eliminates redundancies and typos, while also allowing us to translate tags.

Tag Aliases—The new system incorporates tag aliases (to reduce redundancies, but still acknowledges common alternate terms). For example, you can start typing in “WWII” and it will show “WWII camps → World War II camps” as an option.
Implied Tags—It also adds implied tags. For example, if we add “Little Tokyo” as a tag, it will automatically also add “Los Angeles,” “California,” and “United States.”

Thanks so much to Grady Martin for all of his work in setting up the new canonical tags system and getting them to work, despite the added functionality that kept expanding the scope. Also, we are indebted to Cheryl Toyama who took on the MASSIVE job of reviewing and cleaning up over 18,000 tags from our old tagging system. There are now nearly 12,000 canonical tags. We are also very thankful to Silvia Lumy Akioka (Portuguese), Milagros Tsukayama (Spanish), and Naho Hatada (Japanese) for reviewing the canonical tag translations.

Because of the overwhelming volume of tags, it is inevitable that some errors were made, and aliases and implications missed. Please send us any corrections or additions that we should make. Email us the tags that are incorrect or missing and the corresponding page.

March 26, 2024

We’re continuing to roll out the new design on Discover Nikkei. Today, the Japanese American Military Experience Database has gotten a new look! The changes will give you a preview of what’s to come in other parts of the site. Stay tuned for much more!

March 25, 2024

Did you notice the look of our new About pages? We just released the first of the many design changes coming to Discover Nikkei! We are SO excited to FINALLY begin to share these changes with you, which have been nearly two years in the making.

Thank you to the team at Urban Insight for their help with the new design. We love the fresh, clean look which incorporates some unique touches that connect us with our cultural heritage. We have kept the kokeshi to represent our global Nima-kai community, and we absolutely love the illustrations created by volunteer Roxsy Lin! If you look at the About pages, you’ll see two different versions. In addition to the new look, you may also notice the responsive design which means viewing Discover Nikkei on your mobile and tablet devices is easier to view.

Thank you especially to Discover Nikkei’s engineers—Grady Martin and Waka Ninohira—for doing a tremendous amount of work to get this all ready for you! We also have many volunteers and others who have been working behind-the-scenes.

Much, much more will be released over the next week, so keep checking back!

Illustration by Roxsy Lin