This policy explains what Osaka Tourism Guide (www.osakatourism.org) collects when you read the site, why, and what you can do about it. It describes what the site actually does today rather than a generic set of possibilities. It was last reviewed in September 2026.
The short version
- You can read every guide on this site without giving any personal information at all.
- There is no newsletter, no account to register for, and no comment section — so there is nothing to sign up to and nothing published under your name.
- Google Analytics measures how pages are used, in aggregate.
- The contact form collects what you type into it, and uses it to reply to you.
- Nothing is sold to data brokers.
- Some booking links earn a commission if you book through them, which is explained below.
Readers in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland are asked for consent before any analytics or advertising technology runs, and nothing in those categories loads until you agree to it.
What is collected when you simply read
Like any website, this one runs on a web server that records requests. Those server logs contain your IP address, the time of the request, the page requested, your browser’s user-agent string and the referring page. They are generated by the hosting infrastructure, kept for a short period, and used for security and to diagnose faults. They are not used to build a profile of you.
The site sits behind Cloudflare, which serves pages, absorbs attacks and filters automated traffic. Cloudflare sets a small number of strictly necessary cookies to do that — distinguishing a person from a bot, keeping a rate limit honest, remembering that a security challenge was already solved. These are required for the site to work and are not used for advertising. They are listed individually on the cookie policy page.
Analytics
The site runs Google Analytics 4, loaded through Google’s tag. It records which pages are viewed, roughly where in the world the reader is, what kind of device they are on, and how they arrived — for example from a Google search or a link on another site. This is what shows, say, that the Universal Studios Japan guides get read hardest in the weeks before a school holiday, which determines what gets re-checked next.
Analytics data is processed in aggregate. It is not used to identify individual readers, and IP addresses are truncated by Google before storage. Google acts as a data processor for this and holds the data under its own terms.
You can prevent analytics collection entirely by declining the analytics category in the cookie notice, by installing Google’s browser opt-out add-on, or by using a browser or extension that blocks tracking scripts.
Consent, and how to change your mind
Analytics and advertising technologies are not necessary to deliver the site, and where the law requires consent before they run, that consent is the legal basis relied on. A consent management platform decides which rules apply from where you are reading: in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland nothing beyond the strictly necessary category runs until you opt in, and in jurisdictions that work on an opt-out basis you can refuse at any time.
Your choice is recorded so you are not asked on every page, and it is remembered for twelve months. You can change it whenever you like through the Change your cookie settings link on the cookie policy page. Global Privacy Control signals sent by your browser are honoured automatically. Refusing everything optional costs you nothing — every guide remains fully readable.
The contact form
If you write in through the contact page, the form collects your name, your email address, an optional subject line, an optional page reference and your message. These are emailed to the publisher and used for one purpose: to read and answer what you wrote. The legal basis is legitimate interest — you contacted a publisher expecting a response.
Form submissions are not added to any mailing list, are never sold or shared for marketing, and are deleted once the matter is closed and there is no longer a reason to keep them. Please do not send sensitive personal information, booking references or payment details through the form — it is not the right channel for any of those.
The form is provided by the Contact Form 7 plugin and messages are delivered by email. Delivery involves the site’s hosting provider and its outgoing mail service, which handle the message in transit.
Cookies used on this site
The cookie policy lists every cookie individually, by name, with what sets it and how long it lasts, and it is generated from the services actually running here rather than written by hand. In outline there are three kinds: strictly necessary cookies from Cloudflare and WordPress that keep the site working and secure; the consent platform’s own cookie, which records your answer to the cookie notice; and analytics cookies set by Google Analytics.
One thing genuinely does not fit in a cookie table, and it is worth being plain about it. Stay22, the booking-link partner described below, does not set a cookie at all. It identifies your device from characteristics of your browser and device and keeps an identifier in your browser’s local storage. It sits in the advertising category of the cookie notice, and declining that category stops it before it runs.
Every mainstream browser lets you view, block and delete cookies, and clearing your browser’s site data for this domain removes the local storage identifier as well. Blocking third-party cookies will not break this site.
Affiliate links and booking partners
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. Where a guide points at somewhere to stay or something to book, that link is usually one of them. They are handled by Stay22, a booking-link service that adds a referral tag when you click through to a hotel or booking site. If you go on to book, the booking site pays us a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way, and nothing on this site is behind a paywall or conditional on using those links.
What that means for your data: when you click one of these links, the partner receives the fact that the click came from this site, along with the standard technical details any website receives, and sets its own cookie or identifier so that a booking made afterwards can be attributed and the commission paid. Osaka Tourism Guide never sees your booking, your travel dates, your name or your payment details — what comes back to us is a count of clicks and, occasionally, the fact that a booking happened.
Once you follow one of those links you are on the booking partner’s own site, under their privacy policy, and this one stops applying. Declining the advertising category in the cookie notice stops Stay22 before it starts. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser stops the booking site’s own attribution, but not Stay22’s, which does not use a cookie at all. Either way the links still work and the price is unchanged. There is more detail on the affiliate disclosure page.
Links to other sites
Guides here link out constantly — to Universal Studios Japan, Osaka Castle, the aquarium, the subway and private railway operators, festival organisers and hotel booking pages, so you can check a price or book something directly with whoever provides it. Once you follow such a link you are on someone else’s website, under their privacy policy, and this one no longer applies. Their practices are outside the control of Osaka Tourism Guide.
Embedded content from other websites
Some guides embed content from other sites, such as maps or video. Embedded content behaves exactly as if you had visited that other website: it can collect data about you, set its own cookies and monitor your interaction with it, under that provider’s policies rather than this one.
Your rights
Under UK and EU data protection law you have the right to ask what personal data is held about you, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to object to or restrict its processing, and to receive a copy in a portable form. Readers covered by US state privacy laws have comparable rights, including the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information — this site does not sell personal information to anyone.
In practice, unless you have written in through the contact form, this site holds no personal data about you that could be retrieved: analytics data is aggregated and not linked to your identity. To exercise any of these rights, or to have a form submission deleted, use the contact page. Requests are answered within one month.
If you are in the UK and are unhappy with the response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office; if you are in the EEA, to your national supervisory authority.
Children
This site publishes travel guides for adults planning trips, including family trips to Osaka. It is not directed at children, and no personal information is knowingly collected from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has submitted information through the contact form, write in and it will be deleted.
Changes to this policy
This policy is updated when what the site does changes. The review date at the top shows when it was last checked. Material changes will be reflected here rather than announced individually.