A General Consultation Desk for Care and Welfare

This is a private consultation desk. It works outside public systems such as long-term care insurance or the Act on Comprehensive Support for Persons with Disabilities, so anyone can talk with us anonymously.

"I don't know where to begin." "Before I use any official system, I would like a professional to hear me out first." A practicing certified care worker takes the time to listen to everyday troubles like these. For people who feel uneasy about being overheard, and for people who can only communicate in text, we can also prepare a private room.

Note: In the SOYOGI metaverse, voices are delivered encrypted with AES, the same encryption standard used by governments and militaries (voice stays encrypted on the wire while it passes through our relay server). We have also put various other protections in place against eavesdropping and hacking.

Note: You do not need to give your name, address, or telephone number to consult in the metaverse. To protect the people who come to us from harassment, we do record the IP address of the connection and the date and time. Your IP address is never passed to the devices of other people in the same room (see our privacy policy for what is recorded).

A short introduction

Video by Mai Mogami

This desk may suit you if

• Care or support has suddenly become necessary, and you don't know where to begin
• You would like someone to listen first, without going through an official system
• You want to talk about caring for a family member, or about developmental support and raising a child
• You want to consult completely anonymously (public offices require personal information such as your name, address, phone number and email address)
• Someone at your workplace or among your friends needs support, and you are not sure how to relate to them
• You are a working medical or welfare professional who would like to let off steam, or to get some advice

What SOYOGI offers

You speak directly with a certified care worker (a national qualification) who has built up experience in many settings, including geriatric health services facilities and home-based support for adults and children with disabilities, and who has also completed the specialist training course for supporting people who face severe behavioural difficulties arising from an intellectual or psychiatric disability (kodo-engo).

Private consultation and counseling services (almost all of them unlicensed, or holding a certificate issued by their own organization) usually charge somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 yen per hour. Because we don't want anyone to lose the chance to talk over a price, we set the fee as light as we could manage: 1,000 yen per 30 minutes.

When you speak out loud, still at your own pace

The SOYOGI metaverse has small touches in its sound design, so that people who talk with their voice can feel a little more at ease.

One of them keeps the sounds of daily life from reaching the other side. Keyboard clicks and noises around the house can be held back, so that only your voice comes through. Even when you are thinking "I don't want my family to notice" or "I don't want anyone to know what my room is like," you can talk calmly.

The other lets you set our voice to the volume that is easiest for you to hear. Whether it feels too loud or too hard to catch, you can adjust it to just the right level yourself.

Of course, you are welcome to use no voice at all and talk only in text. This is a quiet preparation for the night when you find yourself thinking, "Maybe I could talk."