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WMJS

Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 2026

Overview

What Makes Japan Smile ("WMJS", "we", "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains what information we collect and how we use it.

Cookies and Consent

When you first visit our site, a cookie consent banner will appear. You can choose to accept or decline non-essential cookies.

  • Functional cookies: When you use an interactive form (Voice Box or Contact), Cloudflare Turnstile — a bot-protection service — may set a short-lived cookie to confirm you are human. The rest of the site functions without cookies.
  • Analytics cookies: If you accept, we use Google Analytics 4 to understand site usage. These cookies help us measure page views, session duration, and traffic sources. No personally identifiable information is collected.

You can change your cookie preference at any time by clearing your browser's local storage for this site and refreshing the page.

Information We Collect

Analytics Data

With your consent, we use Google Analytics 4 to understand how visitors use our site. This may include:

  • Pages visited and time spent
  • Referring website
  • Country of origin (based on IP, which is not stored)
  • Browser and device type

Voice Box Submissions

When you submit a story through our Voice Box, you may optionally provide:

  • Your name (optional)
  • Your email address (optional, for follow-up only)
  • Your story or experience

This information is used solely to create content for WMJS and to contact you if you've given permission. We never sell or share your personal information with third parties.

Contact Form Submissions

When you contact us through our contact form, we collect:

  • Your name
  • Your email address
  • Your message

This information is used solely to respond to your inquiry and is not shared with third parties.

Embedded Content

Our articles may contain embedded videos from YouTube. These platforms may collect data about your interaction with the embedded content. Please refer to their respective privacy policies.

Third-Party Services

  • Cloudflare: Our hosting provider. Cloudflare may process basic connection data for security and performance purposes.
  • Google Analytics 4: With your consent, used to analyze site traffic. See Google's Privacy Policy.
  • Cloudflare Turnstile: A privacy-friendly bot-protection service used on our Voice Box and contact forms. It processes limited technical data to confirm you are human. See Cloudflare's Privacy Policy.
  • Google Fonts: We load fonts from Google Fonts, which may log your IP address. See Google's Privacy Policy.

Advertising

We do not currently display advertising on WMJS. If we introduce display advertising in the future, we will update this policy, and any advertising cookies would be governed by the cookie consent choice you make on the banner.

Affiliate Disclosure

Some articles on WMJS contain affiliate links to third-party travel-related services, such as accommodation booking platforms, eSIM providers, language learning services, and experience booking sites. When you click an affiliate link and complete a purchase or booking, we may receive a small commission from the service provider at no additional cost to you.

Affiliate partnerships do not influence our editorial decisions. We do not write articles to promote specific products. Affiliate links are added only when a service is naturally relevant to the article topic, and we always present multiple options rather than recommending a single "best" choice.

The affiliate programs we currently work with are Klook and GetYourGuide, for experiences and activities. We may add accommodation and travel-insurance partners, such as Agoda and SafetyWing, as those programs go live.

If you prefer not to use affiliate links, you can navigate to any of these services directly through your browser.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

  • Accept or decline non-essential cookies via our consent banner
  • Request access to any personal data we hold about you
  • Request deletion of your data
  • Withdraw consent for Voice Box submissions to be published

Contact

For privacy-related inquiries, please use our contact form or reach out through our social media channels.

Changes

We may update this policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated date.

Analytics and Measurement (by Region)

How we measure site usage depends on the country you visit from, detected at our network edge:

  • European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland: Analytics cookies are off by default. Using Google Consent Mode, we send only anonymous, cookieless signals until you accept the consent banner. Nothing that identifies your device is stored unless you accept.
  • All other regions: Privacy-respecting analytics (Google Analytics 4) are on by default so we can understand which content is useful. A banner notifies you of this, and you can opt out at any time using the "Opt out" option on the banner or by clearing this site's local storage in your browser.

In every region, the choice you make on the banner is stored on your device and applied on your next visit. We do not store personally identifiable information, and the IP address used to determine your region is not retained by us.