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 on 30 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 and the UK are asked for consent before any analytics or advertising technology runs, and nothing in those categories loads until you agree to it. In Switzerland analytics starts on arrival and advertising waits for your answer.
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 and the UK nothing beyond the strictly necessary category runs until you opt in, in Switzerland advertising waits for your answer, 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.
What runs before you choose, and how to change it
What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Travelpayouts — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.
In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice. Analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. In Canada, and in the countries where notice is enough — among them Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India and Mexico — everything described on this page starts when you arrive; the notice tells you so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.
Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_c28043 that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. It lasts about a year. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.
Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Osaka Tourism Guide is held back from readers who say no.
If you are reading this in the United States
Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Osaka Tourism Guide treats it as covered.
So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. Using it stops the advertising category, which is where Travelpayouts and any ad partner sit. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.
This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.
The record kept of your choice
Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.
That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.
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 needs more than a cookie table shows, and it is worth being plain about it. Travelpayouts, the booking-link partner described below, sets one cookie on this site, am_user_session: a random session identifier that is renewed while you read and lapses 30 minutes after you stop. It also keeps a note of the page’s colours 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 what the booking partner stored here as well. Blocking third-party cookies will not break this site.
Affiliate links and booking partners
Some links on this site earn a commission. Osaka Tourism Guide works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.
What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.
If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.
The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.
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 unhappy with the response, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.
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.