Product Codes as a Design Language

When sending international payments through Wise, I used to type TOKI-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX TimelessAdvisor-SpotConsultation into the description field. The transaction's unique identifier followed by the service's full name, crammed into a single line.

One day I realized the string might be too long. Wise's description field has a character limit. "TimelessAdvisor-SpotConsultation" had to be shortened.

Shortening a name meant re-examining the essence of the service. What to keep, what to cut. That judgment is the definition of the service itself.

The Code Table

After the exercise, every product and service received a two-to-four-character code.

TOKI-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX is the unique transaction identifier. The product code tells you "what," while the TOKI code tells you "whose." Writing TOKI-SPOT-2603-0001 TA-SPOT in a payment description captures the entire transaction at a glance.

Why These Eight

TokiQR (MQ / TK)—The product that democratizes proof of existence. The starting point of everything. Its core is proprietary audio encoding technology that inscribes up to 30 seconds of voice into a single QR code. NDL special feature rights create a bridge to Japan's National Diet Library. This is the revenue pillar that supports every other service.

Timeless Advisor (TA)—The quality of the question determines the quality of the design. A sounding board for leaders' thinking, offered in two forms: spot consultation and retainer. Not just "building" a product, but a space to keep asking "why build it."

Workaway (WA)—Opening communities through international volunteering. Infrastructure that moves people. When perspectives from abroad enter a region, the community rediscovers its own value.

Off-Grid (OG)—Independence in power and connectivity. A foundation for activity that doesn't depend on location. The design philosophy of network independence is a direct extension of TokiQR's offline playback.

Ambassador (AMB)—Taking root in communities through Pearl Soap. Building connections through physical goods. A bar of soap—an everyday item—becomes a touchpoint with people that digital channels cannot reach.

SoulCarrier (SC)—Connecting people to their roots. What every other service ultimately supports. Structured as a resonance circle with pay-what-you-wish participation rather than fixed membership fees.

What the Codes Reveal About Design Philosophy

I started with a hypothesis: any service that cannot be expressed in two characters does not yet exist as a service. The brevity of a code equals the sharpness of a service's focus. If you cannot compress a name into two characters, the service hasn't found its center.

SoulCarrier's consolidation into a single type illustrates this perfectly. Originally, there were three membership tiers: regular, lifetime, and supporting. But applying tiers to "resonance" was a contradiction. What distinguishes a regular member from a supporting one? Does resonance have a hierarchy?

We eliminated the tiers and unified everything into a single pay-what-you-wish model. The moment it shifted from "payment for a service" to "resonance with an endeavor," the code converged to a single SC. The name didn't shrink. The philosophy sharpened, and the code became shorter as a natural consequence.

The brevity of a code equals the sharpness of a service's focus.

The Layer Structure

From bottom to top, concrete to abstract.

TokiQR (MQ / TK) generates revenue as the product foundation. Timeless Advisor (TA) ensures design quality. Workaway, Off-Grid, and Ambassador (WA / OG / AMB) create touchpoints with society. SoulCarrier (SC) embodies the mission.

Earn through products, give back through services, fulfill the mission through SoulCarrier. This three-layer structure is the backbone of the eight codes.

What Wise's Constraint Taught Us

A technical constraint triggered an essential reorganization. In the journey from "TimelessAdvisor-SpotConsultation" to "TA-SPOT," we discovered that what remains after stripping away is the essence.

GAS (Google Apps Script), Cloudflare Workers, credits.html, localStorage—TokiStorage's system spans multiple layers. The common language threading through every layer is the product code. Backend payment processing, frontend credit display, and payment descriptions all speak the same code.

A system is healthy when the front and back speak the same language. Organizations where internal codes diverge from customer-facing names eventually stumble over the gap. At TokiStorage, the code the customer sees is the same code running inside the system. Nothing to hide, so nothing is hidden.

A system is healthy when the front and back speak the same language.

The 25-Million-Yen Commitment

In 2025, we spent four months on Maui. Including R&D costs in Japan, the annual investment exceeded 25 million yen. All from personal funds and borrowing.

Why go that far? Behind each of the eight product codes lies the inevitability of that service's existence. TokiQR was born from the impulse to "preserve an ordinary person's voice for 1,000 years." Timeless Advisor grew from the desire to "provide the sounding board I once wished I'd had." SoulCarrier emerged from the conviction that "we need a structure for people to resonate with the work of connecting people to their roots."

Eighty years since the war. One hundred forty since the first government-contracted emigrants. Hawaii is home to 180,000 people of Japanese descent, yet many families lost their ties to Japan during the war, and remains have gone undelivered as generations fade. The average age of first- and second-generation Japanese Americans now exceeds 85, and the receiving relatives in Japan are aging just as fast. We want to answer as many of those soul-deep cries to reconnect as we can. The next ten years are the last window to act.

I am writing this essay on the edge—debts piling up, no clear path to repayment. And yet, every product and service has been built. Just as I stripped product codes down to their essence, I have stripped myself down to nothing. But I finished. All that remains is to set these eight services in motion, deliver value to the world, and press forward with the mission.

Down the road, I will meet many people driven to the brink—by disaster, by conflict, by the crossroads of life. These product codes were conceived in hardship, completed in hardship, and brought to the point of delivery. I hope they show those who come after that a path can always be carved. I hope that families, communities, nations, and the world remain filled with love and peace.