The Day I Step Off the Financial System

1. How to Come Up With Three Million Yen

It started with investing everything into research and development toward international disaster relief volunteering. I consulted with my employer at the time, but there was no department equipped to handle what I was doing — and spending half the year overseas didn't fit the employment contract. The contract was dissolved. From there, with no stable income, I continued disaster recovery work and grave-tending while building a local network. After returning to Japan, I prioritized supporting the burial arrangements of a Japanese-American family I had met during disaster relief work overseas. Repayments fell behind, and that is how things stand today. The debt accumulated along the way.

Several payments converged at the end of the month. A credit card payment due by the 25th. A bank deposit needed by the 27th. An auto loan payment due the morning of the 31st.

A down payment on a property sale was coming at the end of the month — but some things came before it. The credit card payment on the 25th was the only one that couldn't wait.

I thought about selling things. I thought about asking an entrepreneur I knew to try TokiStorage. The option of a consumer loan crossed my mind.

Then a question surfaced: "If my credit score takes a hit, what exactly would that prevent?"

2. What Credit Information Actually Is

Credit bureaus record the payment history on loans and credit cards. Miss a payment or go through debt restructuring and an "adverse event" gets registered — it stays on record for five years. During that time, applications for new loans and credit cards are harder to approve.

Conventionally, a damaged credit score is something to avoid. But that's the perspective of someone who wants to borrow.

If you're not going to borrow, you don't need proof that you're allowed to.

3. The Timing of Repayment Doesn't Matter

Paying in full after an adverse event is registered doesn't change the five-year countdown. The record shows "adverse event — paid in full" and disappears five years from registration. Whether you pay at the end of the month or next year, the date it clears is the same.

I briefly considered negotiating a five-year installment plan. But that was wrong. Splitting several million yen over five years would add hundreds of thousands in interest. No benefit to the credit record whatsoever.

Pay everything off in one shot with the sale proceeds and reach zero. That was the simplest and most economical path.

4. Rental Cars and a Wise Debit Card

I thought concretely about what a damaged credit score would actually prevent. No new credit cards. No new loans.

But existing cards keep working. A Wise debit card has no connection to credit history — unaffected. It works overseas with automatic currency conversion.

I wondered about rental car deposits in Maui. But that too dissolves when you're dealing in cash directly with someone you trust. Credit history isn't needed when there's a relationship.

5. Don't Borrow, Don't Enable Borrowing

TokiStorage revenue comes through Wise. Life in Iga works on cash and a debit card. A life designed without loans means a five-year credit blemish causes almost no real harm.

And that structure is more consistent, anyway. Don't borrow. Don't enable borrowing. No debt. No debt for others.

Credit information is proof that "this person pays back loans." The situations that require that proof won't appear in the life ahead. Which means there's no reason to spend money maintaining it.

6. The Property Sale as Exit

Paying off millions in debt with property sale proceeds isn't simply "paying back a loan."

It's settling accounts with the financial system — and stepping off.

A home was bought with a mortgage. That home is being sold to pay off the mortgage. It looks like returning to zero. But what comes after zero is a different design. A life running on Wise and cash. An economy that moves on trust rather than credit scores.

7. A Beautiful Landing

TokiStorage began with a gravestone that read only "Unknown," encountered during international volunteer work. The goal: to give everyone the opportunity to prove they existed.

There was always a quiet contradiction in pursuing that while carrying debt. Paying off everything in full with the sale proceeds makes that contradiction disappear.

A project working toward the democratization of existence is operating outside the financial system. Trying to carry voices and memories a thousand years forward, from inside a structure that doesn't borrow and doesn't enable borrowing.

That holds together.

8. An Unintended Byproduct

Through this entire experience, a concrete approach to sustaining systems independently of the financial infrastructure was refined. That was an unintended byproduct.

TokiStorage claims disaster resilience. And its creator built and continues to use it while actually being cut off from existing social infrastructure. Paradoxically, that itself is an element of credibility.

Not durability designed on paper — durability verified inside a state of actual disconnection. Whether the infrastructure for carrying voices and memories a thousand years forward genuinely functions in daily life: the person using it is the one proving it, continuously.

When war or conflict intensifies, when solar flares cut the power grid, the financial system will effectively stop functioning. At that point, recording can continue. Having exhausted all credit and being unable to borrow further — and having no one to turn to in a disaster — are nearly equivalent states. Products or services designed to keep working under those conditions are, as far as can be imagined, nonexistent or extremely limited.

TokiStorage is trying to fill that gap.

9. What Was Borrowed Will Be Returned

What was borrowed will be returned. That doesn't change. The property sale proceeds will cover all outstanding debt. This situation is temporary.

There were many calls, emails, and visits from creditors. What most people probably imagine would happen — didn't. The story that debt is dangerous, that intimidating people will show up and make sleep impossible — that turned out to be a myth.

What actually happened was a series of conversations. Explain the situation honestly. Lay out what's possible and what isn't, taking both sides into account. Each party assesses and responds. Repeat. The pressure to trigger negative emotions was limited.

The lesson: maintain sincerity. No lies, no exaggeration. Full commitment to doing everything within reach.

But this experience has taught something else. Things don't always go as planned within a given timeline. There's no malice, no intention. Rules are processed as rules. That can't be fought.

And yet — survival is possible even in that state. Existence can be affirmed. This experience is etched not as failure but as proof of having followed the soul's demand rather than surface-level expectations. A medal, in that sense.

10. The Day I Step Off

The credit score will take a hit because of a missed payment. That fact doesn't change.

But that hit was the final step in stepping off. When the full balance is paid at the end of the month and the record clears five years later, I won't be going back. No plans to take out new loans. No reason to rebuild a credit score.

Living on the other side, inside a different economy.