On 15th February 2015 in the building of Toranomon Hills in downtown of Tokyo, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University’s delegation, headed by the rector Galym Mutanov in the framework of International Symposium "The role of universities in the age of globalization: in search of new directions" presented the experience of internationalization of the leading university of Kazakhstan. Along with the 11 universities of the former Soviet Union, KazNU participated in the symposium as a participant of the Tsukuba University grant project "Global education program for training in economic and scientific fields of multilingual system for Japan, the CIS and the Baltic States". As guests of honor, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kazakhstan in Japan Akylbek Kamaldinov, as well as Russian Federation, Uzbekistan and Belarus Ambassadors greeted the participants of the Symposium. Congratulations to the participants of the symposium were made by the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, and the Department of European Affairs of Japan. Project was briefly presented by Professor Usuyama Toshinobu, University of Tsukuba. The keynote address, "The role of universities in a globalizing world: education without borders", was delivered by Tohsaka Yasuhiko, Professor of University of California, San Diego.

The symposium dialogue platform was dedicated for assigning of new agreements on cooperation between al-Farabi KazNU and Tsukuba University. Rector G.M.Mutanov and President Kyosuke Nagata signed Memorandum "Initiative campus in campus" with plans for further cooperation. According to the Memorandum, both universities will provide their campuses for the partner university to take advantage of research and education resources. The agreement was signed for the next 5 years and will promote the increasing of mobility; it will also develop a system of training for graduates, who will be able to navigate in a rapidly changing world.

Consistent continuation of this agreement became the Memorandum of Understanding on the official opening of the Center for the Japanese and Central Asian Studies at the Far East and South Asian Studies Department, Faculty of Oriental Studies, KazNU. Thereby, KazNU Smart University Model has been designated within the new borders of its campus in Japan.

 Far East and South Asian Studies Department