  We report on the first joint search for gravitational waves by the TAMA and
LIGO collaborations. We looked for millisecond-duration unmodelled
gravitational-wave bursts in 473 hr of coincident data collected during early
2003. No candidate signals were found. We set an upper limit of 0.12 events per
day on the rate of detectable gravitational-wave bursts, at 90% confidence
level. From simulations, we estimate that our detector network was sensitive to
bursts with root-sum-square strain amplitude above approximately 1-3x10^{-19}
Hz^{-1/2} in the frequency band 700-2000 Hz. We describe the details of this
collaborative search, with particular emphasis on its advantages and
disadvantages compared to searches by LIGO and TAMA separately using the same
data. Benefits include a lower background and longer observation time, at some
cost in sensitivity and bandwidth. We also demonstrate techniques for
performing coincidence searches with a heterogeneous network of detectors with
different noise spectra and orientations. These techniques include using
coordinated signal injections to estimate the network sensitivity, and tuning
the analysis to maximize the sensitivity and the livetime, subject to
constraints on the background.
