Privacy Policy

Who we are and how to reach us

Kids Stay ("this site") is published by an individual based in Japan, writing under the name simuta (see our About page). That individual is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy and is responsible for our compliance with it. For safety reasons we do not print a home address online, but our full legal name and postal address are available on request through the contact form, and we provide them to any data protection authority, court or lawyer who asks.

We have not appointed a representative in the EU or the United Kingdom. Requests from readers in those regions are handled directly by us, in English, through the contact form.

This policy applies to the English-language pages of this site (those under /en/). Our Japanese-language pages have their own policy, written in Japanese, which applies to them.

We comply with Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information. Because these pages are written for travellers from abroad, we also apply the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection to readers in those regions, and the disclosures required by California law to readers there.

What we collect, why, and for how long

This site has no accounts and no newsletter. We receive information about you in four ways.

• When you write to us.Our contact form asks for your name, your email address and your message. We use them only to answer you. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in replying to people who contact us. Please include only what we need to help you; if you choose to tell us about a family member's health, allergies or disability so that we can answer, we treat that as your explicit consent to use it for that reply. We keep messages for up to two years after our last exchange, then delete them, unless we need them longer to deal with a legal claim.
• Server logs. Like almost every website, our hosting provider (Xserver, in Japan) records each request in a server log: your IP address, browser type, the page requested, the referring page and the time. We use these logs to keep the site secure, to detect abuse and automated crawling, and to understand traffic in aggregate. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in running a secure site. We keep logs for up to twelve months and then delete them.
• Cookies and similar technologies, described in the next section. If you are browsing from the EEA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or Quebec, analytics, affiliate tracking and the embedded Google Maps stay off until you choose "Accept" in our cookie banner; the legal basis is your consent, and you can withdraw it at any time. Everywhere else they are on by default, and you can switch them off at any time via "Cookie preferences" in the footer.
• Your cookie choice itself, which is stored in your browser so that we do not ask you again on every page. We ask again after twelve months.

We do not make automated decisions about you and we do not profile you. We never sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties except as described in this policy or where the law requires it.

Keeping personal information secure

We take appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being leaked, lost or damaged. Traffic to and from this site, including our contact form, is encrypted with SSL/TLS. Only the site operator has access to the mailbox and the server logs, and we choose service providers that publish their own security and data protection commitments.

Cookies, and information sent to third parties from your browser

How this works depends on where you are browsing from. If you are in the EEA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or Quebec, nothing but strictly necessary storage is used until you choose "Accept" in our cookie banner. If you choose "Decline", neither analytics, affiliate tracking nor the embedded map is loaded, and the site works exactly the same. Everywhere else, analytics and affiliate tracking are on by default, as described below. In both cases you can change your mind at any time. One click on "Cookie preferences" in the footer of any English page shows the banner again, where you can accept or decline. Opting out is as easy as opting in.

The table below lists everything this site stores in, or sends from, your browser, who receives it, and why.

Fonts and icons are served from our own server; no third party is contacted to display them.

Analytics (Google Analytics)

This site uses Google Analytics, provided by Google. It uses cookies to collect traffic data, such as which pages are read and roughly where readers come from, so that we can improve the site. We do not use it to identify you personally, and we do not use its advertising or cross-device features. Google processes this data on our behalf under Google's data processing terms and keeps event-level data for at most 14 months. Google is a U.S. company certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension. For details, see the Google Analytics Terms of Service and Google's policies and terms.

Affiliate services (Stay22)

Our English pages use Stay22, a service that turns links to booking platforms, such as Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo, into trackable links, so that a booking you make after leaving this site can be credited to us. Stay22 may set cookies and read technical information such as your IP address, browser and the page you came from, in order to attribute a booking and to show the right regional version of a booking site. Stay22 may also add links within our text to relevant booking searches; those links are marked as sponsored.

In the regions listed above this runs only after you accept cookies; elsewhere it runs by default unless you opt out via "Cookie preferences" in the footer. Stay22 acts as an independent controller of the data it collects. It is based in Canada, which the EU and the UK recognise as providing adequate data protection. See the Stay22 Privacy Policy and Stay22 Cookie Policy. Once you arrive at a booking platform, that platform's own privacy policy applies to everything you do there.

On our Japanese pages

Our Japanese-language pages use different affiliate services (Rakuten Affiliate and ValueCommerce) for Japanese booking sites. Those services are not loaded on the English pages.

Advertising (Google AdSense)

This site does not currently show display advertising. If we introduce Google AdSense in future, Google and other third-party vendors may use cookies to serve ads based on your previous visits, and we will update this policy before that happens. You can opt out of personalized advertising at any time in Google's ad settings or at www.aboutads.info.

Where your information goes

This site is operated from Japan: we read and answer your messages in Japan, and our web server and its logs are in Japan. If you are in the EU/EEA or the United Kingdom, this is a transfer outside your region, but both the European Commission and the United Kingdom have formally recognised Japan as providing an adequate level of data protection, so no additional safeguards are required for it. Japan is not on Switzerland's adequacy list; if you are in Switzerland, we rely on the fact that you send your message to us yourself, for the purpose of receiving a reply, and on your consent for cookies.

Three service providers help us on the way. A message from our contact form goes first to a small relay program we run on Cloudflare Workers, which screens it for spam and limits how often one address can submit (your IP address is held in memory for a few minutes for that check and is not stored). The relay hands the message to Resend, an email delivery service, which delivers it to our mailbox hosted by Google. Resend keeps a copy in its delivery logs for 30 days. Cloudflare, Resend and Google are U.S. companies certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, including its UK extension, which the EU and UK recognise for transfers to the United States. If that framework were ever to lapse, each of them also offers the EU and UK standard contractual clauses, which we would rely on instead. Google (for analytics and maps) and Stay22 (for affiliate links) also operate their own international infrastructure under their own privacy policies.

Your rights

Wherever you are, you have the right to ask us to:

• confirm what personal information we hold about you, and give you a copy
• correct it if it is wrong, or complete it if it is incomplete
• delete it
• restrict how we use it, or object to our using it
• send it to you or to someone else in a portable format
• stop relying on your consent (you can withdraw it at any time, and that does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it)

To exercise any of these, write to us through the contact form. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not give your information to someone else. We answer without undue delay and in any case within one month; for a complex request we may take up to two further months, and we will tell you if so. There is no charge. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work. In the EU, that is the authority of your country (the European Data Protection Board keeps a list); in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office; in Switzerland, the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner; in Japan, the Personal Information Protection Commission.

If you are in California

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are used in the California Consumer Privacy Act. We do not offer financial incentives in exchange for personal information, and we will never treat you differently for exercising any privacy right.

Because we do not sell or share personal information, there is nothing for a "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control browser signal to switch off, and we do not currently change how the site behaves in response to those signals. You can still switch analytics and affiliate cookies off at any time via "Cookie preferences" in the footer.

Children's privacy

This site is written for parents and other adults planning family travel. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, please tell us and we will delete it.

Advertising and affiliate disclosure

This site takes part in the affiliate programs below. When you book a stay through a link on this site, we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. You never pay more than you would by going to the booking site directly.

• Stay22: Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo and other booking platforms (English pages)
• Rakuten Affiliate (Japanese-language pages)
• ValueCommerce (Japanese-language pages)

Which properties we list, and how we assess them, comes from our own research into primary sources such as official websites and booking platforms, never from what a property or platform pays. Commission does not affect the order properties appear in, or how we describe them, and no property has ever paid to be listed here.

Disclaimer

We take every care over the accuracy of the information published on this site, but we do not guarantee it, and we are not responsible for the information or services provided on other sites we link to. The extent of our liability is set out in Article 5 of our Terms of Use.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy as necessary. Any revised policy takes effect when it is published on this site, and the revision date below will tell you when that was. If a change affects how we use information you have already given us, we will ask for your consent again where the law requires it.