IC Eight is built around one narrow problem: how English-first technology products become clear, credible, and usable in Japanese.

Across my career, I have worked on Japanese product and marketing language for global technology companies, including long-running, judgment-heavy engagements with brands such as Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, and CircleCI.

That work was never about cleaning up machine output or polishing translated wording. It was about deciding what the Japanese experience should be, from the first word.

The hard part was knowing what Japanese users needed to understand, what the product needed them to trust, and what the English source copy assumed but never said.

Over time, the pattern became clear: many Japanese product problems are not caused by poor translation. They come from trying to build the Japanese experience from English copy after the product logic has already been set.

IC Eight was created for SaaS teams entering Japan that need a different starting point: Japanese UX before Japanese copy.

What this means in practice

We build Japanese product experiences from intent: what the user needs to understand, what the product needs them to do, and what the experience needs to make feel clear, trustworthy, and usable in Japanese.

The work is AI-native, but not automated away.

AI is used to generate, compare, structure, and scale. Human judgment stays where it matters: intent, tone, trust, usability, and whether the Japanese experience works as part of the product.

One operator. One language pair. No handoffs.

Native Japanese judgment. Fluent English communication.

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