Our Story
From our founding in May 2025 to today.
Consultations are currently offered in Japanese only.
About Our Representative
A place that could only be built because of the "blank years" spent living with illness.
Representative: Hiro
Qualification: Certified Care Worker (kaigo fukushi-shi), obtained in 2000
I am a survivor of childhood abuse, a support worker who walked the welfare field for many years, and someone who developed depression after workplace harassment and, at the end of a long illness, fell out of society altogether. That is exactly why I understand, better than anyone, the walls faced by people who feel "I am too afraid to go to a support desk," "I cannot make my voice come out on the phone," or "I fall outside long-term care insurance and the country's other systems."
SOYOGI is not a large corporation. It runs as my own undertaking, a non-profit voluntary association, so that I can face your SOS directly without being bound by an organization's rules.
As far as I have been able to research, no voluntary association anywhere in the world carries out this combination of activities on a completely non-profit basis, so I believe this is an attempt without precedent. (This still holds as of August 2026.)
It is precisely because there is no precedent that it is worth doing. I began this work believing that.
If you would like to know more about my beliefs and who I am, please have a look at SOYOGI's note (in Japanese).
History
- May 7, 2025 Founded SOYOGI Care & Support Consultation as a non-profit voluntary association
- June 15, 2025 Began operating our consultation desk in the metaverse (every day, 6:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. JST). It has continued without a day off ever since
- January 23, 2026 Selected from 123 entries to the ideathon "Stablecoin (JPYC) Innovation Challenge 2025" and, as one of the 16 teams on the final pitch stage, won two prizes: 3rd place in the Grand Prix and 3rd place for the Ethereum Award
- February 2026 Started publishing on our official note
- March 10, 2026 Featured in the print edition of Sports Nippon (West Japan edition)
- July 2026 Moved entirely to the SOYOGI metaverse, developed in-house (browser-based, no installation required)
- July 2026 Through a preliminary inquiry to the FinTech Support Desk of Japan's Financial Services Agency, received written confirmation that our support scheme built with JPYC does not require registration under the Payment Services Act
- July 11, 2026 Published an activity report on PR TIMES
- August 1, 2026 Began publishing our monthly income and expenses in full on note
- August 3, 2026 Featured in the print edition of Daily Sports (Osaka head office edition)
- August 4, 2026 Established and published our operating rules
- August 2026 Released the SOYOGI theme songs on YouTube
- August 2026 Moved our Google Play developer registration to an organization (non-profit) account
- August 28, 2026 Moved our official site to its own domain, soudansoyogi.com (Japanese and English)
- August 28, 2026 Strengthened safety measures in the SOYOGI metaverse: began keeping records to deal with abusive behaviour, and set out how those records are handled in our privacy policy
- September 1, 2026 Moved our booking and enquiry desk from an outside service to a system we built ourselves (no email address needed; everything happens on a page of your own)
- September 4, 2026 Updated our activity report on PR TIMES with the latest information
- September 4, 2026 Included in GIVbacks, the donor reward program run by the donation platform Giveth
- September 2026 After the move to an organization account, resumed releasing our apps on Google Play one by one
Track Record and Certification
Consultations
More than 70, including free sessions and chat consultations (as of September 2026). Please also see Voices.
Free Apps
We have developed and released 26 apps and 5 Chrome extensions (completely free, with no ads). See the full list.
International Certification
We hold Verified status on the donation platform Giveth. On 4 September 2026 the project was also included in GIVbacks, Giveth's reward program for donors. Counting every project through Giveth's public API that day, 7,696 were listed publicly, 4,397 held Verified status and 4,222 were included in GIVbacks. Of those 4,222, some 3,618 had been registered in bulk by an overseas donation intermediary, leaving 604 that their operators registered themselves. As far as we could confirm, SOYOGI is the only one of those 604 registered from Japan.
Newspaper Coverage
We have been featured in two newspapers: Sports Nippon (March 2026) and Daily Sports (August 2026).
Organization Details
| Name | Kaigo to Shien no Soudan-dokoro Soyogi (SOYOGI Care & Support Consultation) |
|---|---|
| Representative | Hironobu Chiba (Certified Care Worker) |
| Structure | Non-profit voluntary association (We deliberately take the form of an independent voluntary association that accepts no public subsidies, so that we can deliver quick and flexible support for the difficulty in front of us without being tied to complicated administrative procedures and frameworks. It is run by the representative personally, supported by anonymous collaborators.) |
| Place of tax registration | Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture |
| Actual place of work | Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture |
| Registered office address | 150-0043 Shibuya Dogenzaka Tokyu Building 2F-C, 1-10-8 Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo |
| Date established | May 7, 2025 |
| Hours | 6:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. (JST) 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (by appointment; we are not stationed in the metaverse) 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. (no appointment needed; we are in the metaverse) |
| Regular closing days | None in particular (temporary closures are possible due to illness, injury, and the like) |