Privacy Policy

Soul Food in Japan(“we,” “us”) is a travel and food publication. This page explains what information is collected when you visit soulfoodinjapan.blog and how it is used. We keep it short and honest.

Information we collect

We do not ask you to create an account, and we do not directly collect personal information such as your name or email address unless you choose to email us. Like most websites, our hosting and third-party services may automatically receive standard technical data — such as your browser type, device, approximate location, and pages viewed — to keep the site running and understand what content is useful.

Cookies and local storage

Some features store small amounts of data in your own browser (local storage) so the site can remember your choices — for example, your Bucket List of dishes. This stays on your device and is not sent to us. You can clear it any time through your browser settings.

The first time you rate a dish or leave an emoji reaction, we set a cookie named sfj_voter_id containing a random identifier (no name, email or IP address), which expires one year after it is set. It lets us count one vote per browser and show you your own rating or reaction; it is needed for those features and is not used for analytics or advertising.

Google Analytics cookies are only set if you allow them — see Analytics below.

Apart from these, we do not set cookies, and no advertising cookies are used. Websites you visit through our outbound links (for example, booking sites), and any content from another service embedded in a page, may set their own cookies under their own policies. You can control or block cookies through your browser settings; ratings and reactions need their cookie to be saved.

Advertising

We do not currently show ads, and no advertising network (including Google AdSense) runs on this site or sets cookies here. Our use of Google Analytics is set up so that its data is not used for advertising (see Analytics).

If we add advertising in the future, we will update this page before it starts and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent before any advertising cookies are used.

Affiliate links

We may use affiliate links in the future. If we do, we will clearly disclose them, and we may earn a small commission when you book or buy through them at no extra cost to you. We only recommend things we genuinely think are useful, and a commission never changes what we recommend or what we write.

If and when we join affiliate programs — for example Amazon Associates, travel booking and experience platforms (hotels, tours, eSIM/Wi-Fi, rail passes), or Japanese affiliate networks such as Rakuten, A8.net, and Moshimo Affiliate — we will update this page and disclose it clearly. Such programs typically use cookies to track referrals from our site.

Analytics

We use analytics to understand which pages and tools (such as the Food Planner, Bucket List and dish ratings) are actually useful, so we can decide what to improve. We never send your name, email address, rating voter ID or anything you type into the site to these services.

Vercel Web Analytics (provided by Vercel, our hosting company) runs for every visitor and does not use cookies. For each page view or site action it records the page address, the referring site, approximate location (country/region/city), browser, operating system and device type, plus — for site actions such as a planner step or a share button — a short label like the dish or prefecture involved. Before anything is sent, we remove parts of the page address that could identify you or a shared trip (for example shared-plan codes, email addresses and unknown URL parameters), keeping only campaign tags such as utm_source and our own page settings. The referring site is recorded only when you arrive from another website. Visitors are counted using a hash of the incoming request that is discarded after 24 hours, so visits cannot be linked to you or across websites, and we only see aggregated statistics.

Google Analytics 4 (provided by Google) runs only if you choose “Allow” in the cookie banner. Until then the Google Analytics script is not loaded and nothing is sent to Google. If you allow it, Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (_ga and _ga_<ID>, which expire two years after your last visit) to recognise repeat visits, and records the pages you view (with the same page-address clean-up as above), the site you came from, approximate location derived from your IP address (Google Analytics does not store IP addresses), device and browser type, and the site features you use. We turn off Google signals and ad personalization for this data and do not use it for advertising. Google may process this data on servers outside your country, including in the United States.

How long Google Analytics data is kept: event-level data linked to the cookie identifier (used for detailed analyses) is kept for 14 months and then deleted automatically by Google. Aggregated reports that do not identify individual visitors (for example, total page views per month) are not subject to this limit and may be kept longer. The cookies themselves stay in your browser for up to two years unless you withdraw consent or clear them.

Changing your choice: use the Cookie settings link at the bottom of every page to allow or decline at any time. If you withdraw consent, Google Analytics stops sending data from that moment, its _gacookies on this site are deleted, and it is not loaded on later visits. Data already sent before you withdrew is not deleted immediately; it is removed at the end of the retention period above, or you can email us to ask for it to be deleted sooner. Every feature of the site keeps working whichever you choose. Your choice is remembered in your browser's local storage (clearing it means we ask again). You can also use Google's Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. For more on how Google uses this data, see How Google uses information from sites that use its services.

External links

This site links to other websites we don't control. We're not responsible for their content or privacy practices — please review their own policies.

Children

This site is intended for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the site grows. When we do, we'll change the “last updated” date above.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email us at soulfoodinjapan@gmail.com, or read more about the site.