Privacy Policy

2023.08.04

Last updated: February 15, 2026

Who We Are

Our website address is: https://karakkaze-biwako.tokyo

What Personal Data We Collect and Why We Collect It

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect:

  • The data shown in the comments form (name, email address, website URL if provided)
  • The visitor’s IP address
  • Browser user agent string

Why we collect this data:

  • To help detect and prevent spam
  • To display your name and profile picture with your comment

Gravatar: An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact Forms

When you submit our contact form, we collect:

  • Your name
  • Your email address
  • The message content you provide

Why we collect this data:

  • To respond to your inquiry

This information is used solely to respond to your inquiry and is not shared with third parties. We retain contact form submissions for up to one year.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use our site.

What Google Analytics collects:

  • Pages you visit
  • Time spent on pages
  • How you arrived at our site
  • Your general location (city/country level)
  • Device and browser information
  • Your IP address (anonymized)

Why we use this data:

  • To improve our site content and user experience

For more information about Google Analytics privacy practices, visit: https://policies.google.com/privacy

You can opt-out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Cookies

What are cookies: Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device when you visit our website.

How we use cookies:

1. Comment Cookies: If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

2. Analytics Cookies: We use Google Analytics cookies to understand how visitors interact with our site.

3. Advertising Cookies: We use Google AdSense cookies to serve relevant ads to visitors.

How to control cookies: You can control and/or delete cookies through your browser settings. However, blocking cookies may affect your experience on our site.

Embedded Content from Other Websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content such as:

  • YouTube videos
  • Amazon product links (affiliate links)
  • Images from other websites

Important: Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if you have visited those websites directly. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content.

Privacy policies of third-party services we commonly embed:

Advertising and Affiliate Programs

Google AdSense

This website uses Google AdSense, a web advertising service provided by Google LLC.

How Google AdSense works:

  • Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to this website or other websites
  • Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet
  • These ads are tailored to your interests based on your browsing history

Opt-out of personalized advertising:

  • You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings
  • Alternatively, you can opt out of third-party vendors’ use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting aboutads.info

More information:

Affiliate Programs

This site participates in affiliate programs including:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Other affiliate programs (such as Rakuten Affiliate, affiliate service providers, etc.)

What this means:

  • We may earn a commission when you click on or make purchases via affiliate links
  • This does not affect the price you pay
  • We only recommend products we have personally used or genuinely believe will be valuable to our readers

Amazon Associates Disclosure:

karakkaze-biwako.tokyo is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.com.

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Amazon Privacy Policy: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GX7NJQ4ZB8MHFRNJ

How Long We Retain Your Data

Comments: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

Contact Form Submissions: We retain contact form submissions for up to one year.

Analytics Data: Google Analytics data is retained according to Google’s data retention policies (default: 26 months, but we can configure this).

What Rights You Have Over Your Data

If you have left comments on this site, you can request:

  • To receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you
  • That we erase any personal data we hold about you

Important: This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How to request: Please contact us through our contact form.

Where Your Data Is Sent

Comment Spam Detection: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service (Akismet). Akismet’s privacy policy: https://automattic.com/privacy/

Analytics: Analytics data is processed by Google Analytics servers. For more information, visit: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Data Security

We take reasonable measures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. However, no internet transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Children’s Privacy

Our website is not intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the “Last updated” date.

Contact Information

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us through our contact form.

As this is a personal blog, please feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback. I will do my best to respond kindly.

Additional Information for EU Visitors (GDPR)

If you are located in the European Union, you have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

  • Right to access: You can request access to your personal data
  • Right to rectification: You can request correction of inaccurate data
  • Right to erasure: You can request deletion of your data
  • Right to restrict processing: You can request limitation of how we use your data
  • Right to data portability: You can request a copy of your data in a machine-readable format
  • Right to object: You can object to our processing of your data

To exercise these rights, please contact us through our contact form.

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