Privacy Policy

Our approach

We handle only the minimum information the service needs. We do not collect your email address, real name, phone number or postal address. Route search works without signing in.

What we collect

• Sign-in identifier: when you sign in with Google or Apple we receive only the user number issued by the provider, and store it as a keyed hash that cannot be reversed. We do not request your name, email or profile photo.
• Passkeys: we store only the public key and the credential identifier. Biometric data never leaves your device.
• Profile: user ID and display name. Optionally: home country/region, whether you live in Japan or are visiting, languages, and travel style. These are shown on your posts and used to filter tips.
• Posts: tips, questions and answers, live reports, and abuse reports.
• Saved routes: the search conditions you chose to save.
• Avatar (optional): an image you upload yourself. We receive only a version shrunk on your device. It does not have to show your face. If you make your page public, anyone can see it. You can remove it at any time.
• Tip photos (optional): photos you attach to a tip (up to three per tip). We receive only a version shrunk on your device, and our server also removes embedded data such as GPS location, date taken and camera model as soon as it is received, before storing it. Our team checks each photo before it is published; until then only you and our team can see it. Published photos can be seen by anyone on the tip and on the place page. They are used only within this site, never on social media or in ads.
• Visit records (optional): the places you recorded with “I'm here”, and the date. Your position (latitude and longitude) is used only to check that you are near the place and is not stored. If you answer the one question asked afterwards (English signage, crowding and so on), the answer is stored with the record; only per-place counts are shown.
• Your page (optional): only if you make it public, your display name, avatar, rank, number of places visited, published tips and the social links you added appear on a page anyone can see. The list of places you visited is not shown. Pages are private by default.
• Member card: a photo you choose for the card is used only on your own device to draw the card image. It is not sent to our servers or stored.
• Signed-in devices: browser and OS family (e.g. “Chrome / macOS”) and the last time used.
• For accounts we have suspended, we keep only the sign-in identifier (in its irreversible form) after the account is deleted, to stop the account being re-created.

What we do not collect or keep

• We do not store IP addresses in our database (apart from short-lived server access logs).
• “Current location” is read from your browser only when you press the button, used for that one search, and not stored.
• On the Nearby page, distances to sights, events and stations are worked out on your device. Your current location, or a point you pick on the map, is not sent to our servers. Two exceptions: when you look for toilets (the coordinates of that place) and when we check the chance of rain (only the name of the nearest area), the request is sent to our server for that lookup. Neither is stored. The rain outlook is retrieved by our server from the Japan Meteorological Agency website; only the forecast-region code is sent to the Agency, and nothing is sent to it directly from your browser.
• “Where the bus is now” on place pages is retrieved by our server from data the bus operators publish. Only the request for that fixed data is sent to the operator’s side; nothing is sent to it directly from your browser, and your location is not used. Links to official pages take you to the other site only when you press them.
• Recent searches, routes saved on your device, and the “Your trip” options for route search (such as travelling with kids or large luggage) and your trip stage (“Planning a trip” / “In Japan now”) are stored only in your browser, not on our servers. The “Your trip” options are sent as conditions of each search you make. Until you choose a trip stage, we guess it from your device’s time-zone setting (whether it is set to Japan). Neither the stage nor the time zone is sent to our servers.
• Where you are looking (all of Japan, a region, or nearby) and the region you picked are also stored only in your browser. When you choose “Nearby”, your current location is used on your device only to work out the nearest region; it is neither stored nor sent (only the name of the region is remembered). Which home view you chose (find a place, or plan a route) is likewise stored only in your browser.
• We do not log your searches against your account unless you save a route yourself.
• No advertising trackers and no behavioural targeting. Referral links to booking sites (marked as ads) take you to the other site only when you press them.

How we use it

• To recognise you and keep your account
• To show posts and filter tips by home region, language and travel situation
• To deal with abusive posts and apply rate limits
• To improve the service using aggregate, non-identifying statistics

Cookies

We use four kinds of cookies: one to keep you signed in, one that exists only during sign-in, one to remember your language, and one that tells apart devices that pressed ♡. The ♡ cookie is a random number issued only when you press ♡ (kept for one year), used so the same device is not counted twice for the same place. Our servers store only a hashed form of that number, and it is not linked to your IP address or name. All are first-party. We use no third-party advertising or analytics cookies.

Sharing and external transmission

We do not provide personal information to third parties except where required by law. Requests your browser makes to other companies are listed on the “External transmission” page.

When you press “Translate” on a tip, our server sends that tip’s title and text to Cloudflare’s translation service (Workers AI) to translate it; nothing about you is sent. The translation is stored temporarily (up to 30 days) in Cloudflare’s cache so the same tip need not be translated again.

Your choices

• From My Page you can edit your profile, download your data, and delete your account.
• Deleting your account removes your sign-in methods, profile, saved routes and tip photos and unpublishes all of your posts.
• You can delete any individual post yourself.
• You can delete any of your tip photos at any time. It stops being shown immediately and the data is deleted. Photos are also deleted when you delete the tip or your account.

Retention

We keep data while your account exists. Live reports stop being shown after a few hours. For crowding reports, we also keep only anonymous counts per place or line, day type (weekday or weekend/holiday) and time of day, to show “usual crowding”; these counts cannot be linked to you and remain after you delete your account. Temporary sign-in values are removed within ten minutes.

Contact

(A contact point will be listed at launch.)