Last updated: October 25, 2026
1. Who we are
Tokyo Trailhead is an independent guide to the mountains you can reach from central Tokyo by train. It is researched, walked, photographed and written by one person — a hiker living in Tokyo who publishes under the name Koke.
For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the operator of Tokyo Trailhead is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.
We are a one-person site, not a company, and we keep one contact channel: our contact form. Every message is read by the person who writes this site. More about who writes this site, and how the articles are put together, is on our About page.
2. The short version
- You do not need an account, a subscription, or any personal detail to read anything on this site.
- The only information you actively hand us is what you type into our contact form.
- Everything else is collected automatically — by ordinary web infrastructure (our host) and by third-party services we use for advertising and traffic measurement.
- We do not sell your personal data. We never have, and we do not intend to.
3. Information we collect
Information you give us
Contact form. If you write to us, we receive the name, the email address and the message you choose to submit. We use them for one purpose only: to read your message and reply to you. We do not add you to any mailing list, and we do not pass your message to anyone else. Messages are kept for up to 24 months and then deleted.
Information collected automatically
Server logs. Our hosting provider, located in Japan, records standard web-server information each time a page is requested: your IP address, your browser and operating system, the page you asked for, the page that referred you, and the date and time. These logs keep the site running, help us diagnose errors, and let us spot abuse such as brute-force login attempts. They are not used to build a profile of you. Our host also screens every incoming request with a web application firewall, which reads the same information in order to block attacks before they reach the site.
Comments
Comments are switched off across this site, so no comment data — no names, no email addresses, no IP addresses — is collected. If we ever turn comments on, we will update this policy before we do.
4. Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that a website stores in your browser. Some are needed for the site to work at all; others are set by third parties to measure traffic or to choose which advertisement you see.
| Type | Set by | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | This site (WordPress) | Keeps the site secure. Cannot be switched off without breaking the site. |
| Analytics | Not currently in use — see section 7 | Would count visits, so we could see which pages people actually read. |
| Advertising | Google AdSense, its partners, affiliate networks | Chooses which ads you see, limits repeat views, credits a booking to this site. |
You can delete or block cookies in your browser settings at any time. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may stop parts of the site from working. Blocking advertising cookies does not remove the ads; it makes them less relevant to you.
If you are in the EEA or the UK, we ask for your consent before any analytics or advertising cookie is set, and you can change or withdraw that consent at any time.
5. Advertising
This site is free to read, and it is paid for by advertising. We use Google AdSense.
- Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site.
- Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.
- You can opt out of personalised advertising at Google Ads Settings. You can also opt out of third-party vendors’ use of cookies at aboutads.info or, in Europe, at youronlinechoices.eu.
- Third-party vendors and ad networks other than Google may also serve ads on this site and may use their own cookies.
- Some of these vendors also use web beacons, sometimes called pixel tags: a single invisible image request that records that a page was opened. Clearing cookies does not stop a web beacon, though declining advertising cookies means that what it records cannot be tied to an advertising profile.
If you are in the EEA or the UK, ads are served in line with Google’s EU user consent policy, and no personalised advertising cookie is set unless you have given consent.
6. Affiliate links
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you book a room, join a tour, or buy a piece of gear after following one, we receive a small commission. The price you pay is exactly the same.
We take part in affiliate programmes run by accommodation booking platforms, guided-tour marketplaces, transport operators and online retailers. When you follow one of these links, the partner sets a cookie so that the booking can be credited to this site. From that point you are on their website, and their privacy policy applies rather than ours.
The partners we work with change over time, so we do not list them individually here. Where a programme requires us to identify it by name, we do so on the pages where its links appear.
One thing we want to be plain about: a commission never decides what we recommend. If a trail is crowded, if a view is unreliable, if a chairlift will not carry you, we say so — that is the entire reason this site exists.
7. Analytics
As of the date at the top of this page, this site runs no analytics service that sets a cookie or that identifies you. Visitor numbers come from the aggregate reporting our host produces from the server logs described in section 3.
We may add Google Analytics 4 in future. If we do, this page will be revised before it goes live, and in the EEA and the UK no analytics cookie would be set unless you had given consent. Were it running, it would tell us that a page was read; it would not tell us who you are, and you could switch it off entirely with the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
8. Our legal bases
If you are in the EEA or the UK, we process your personal data on these bases:
| What we process | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Server logs, firewall records | Keeping the site available and safe | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Contact form submissions | Answering your message | Legitimate interest, or your consent where you chose to write to us (Art. 6(1)(f) / (a)) |
| Analytics cookies | Understanding which articles are useful | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) |
| Advertising cookies | Funding a free site | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) |
9. How long we keep information
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Contact form messages | Up to 24 months, then deleted |
| Server logs | As long as our hosting provider retains them, typically a few months |
| Analytics data | None is held at present. Were analytics added, Google’s retention settings would apply, currently 14 months |
| Cookies | Until they expire, unless you delete them sooner |
10. Where your information goes
This site is hosted in Japan, so if you read it from Europe or North America your request is handled outside your own country. The European Commission has recognised Japan as providing an adequate level of data protection, so transfers from the EEA to Japan do not require additional safeguards.
Google operates globally and may process data in other countries, including the United States, under its own transfer mechanisms such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
11. Your rights
If you are in the EEA or the UK, you have the right to:
- access the personal data we hold about you;
- correct it if it is wrong;
- erase it;
- restrict or object to how we use it;
- receive a copy of it in a portable format;
- withdraw consent at any time, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it.
To exercise any of these, write to us through the contact form. We will respond within one month. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to your national data protection authority.
Realistically, the only personal data we hold directly is the contact form message you sent us. For data held by Google, you may also need to contact Google directly.
12. If you are in California
We do not sell your personal information for money, and we never have. Note that under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended, allowing third-party advertising cookies can count as “sharing” personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. You can stop that by declining advertising cookies or by turning off personalised ads in Google Ads Settings.
You also have the right to know what personal information we hold, to have it deleted, and not to be treated differently for exercising either right. Use the contact form.
13. Children
This site is written for adults planning a hike. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us personal data through the contact form, tell us and we will delete it.
14. Security
The site is served over HTTPS, sits behind a web application firewall run by our host, and runs on software that is kept up to date. No website can promise perfect security, but we keep the amount of personal data we hold deliberately small — which is the most reliable protection there is.
15. Changes to this policy
We will update this page when what we do changes — for example when a new advertising or affiliate partner is added. The date at the top always shows when it was last revised.
16. Contact
Questions about this policy, or about the data we hold on you, go through our contact form.