Newsletter subscription and the welcome Guide
If you subscribe to the Japan in Small Ways newsletter, we ask for your email address and an optional first name. We use Brevo to process the subscription and send a confirmation email. You confirm your subscription by clicking the button in that email. The confirmation opens 10 Quiet Ways to Bring a Little Japan into Your Everyday Life, our welcome gift.
We rely on your consent to send the newsletter: thoughtful stories, new articles and small ideas for exploring Japanese culture in everyday life. Articles linked from the newsletter may contain disclosed affiliate recommendations. Under the current editorial approach, the emails do not contain direct affiliate purchase links.
Your email address is needed to provide the subscription; your first name is optional. Subscription and confirmation events are recorded in Brevo, together with the source form and email activity.
Unsubscribing
You can withdraw your newsletter consent using the unsubscribe link in an email or by contacting us. Withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal. We will not withdraw access to the Guide already provided.
We retain the minimum information necessary to honor an unsubscribe request and prevent unwanted future marketing. Unsubscribing is separate from requesting deletion of other information.
Contacting us and operating the website
When you use our Contact form, we will use your email address, message and optional name to respond and handle your inquiry, editorial correction or privacy request. If you contact us by email, we use your contact details and message for the same purpose. Contacting us will not subscribe you to our newsletter. SiteGround provides our website hosting and webmail.
We rely on our legitimate interests in responding to inquiries, correcting editorial errors and keeping the website secure. Technical information, such as IP addresses and request logs, may be processed to operate and protect the website. Where we must handle a request or retain information to meet a legal obligation, we rely on that obligation.
Why We Use Analytics
We use analytics to better understand what our readers find meaningful, how they engage with our stories, and where we can improve.
Our aim is to create more thoughtful, useful content that helps you explore Japanese culture and bring a little of its wisdom into everyday life.
We believe understanding our readers helps us serve them better. We also believe you should have a clear choice about how your data is used.
Email engagement measurement
Where you give separate consent, Brevo records individual email engagement, including opening and clicking events associated with you as a subscriber. We use this information to understand engagement and improve our newsletter. Email delivery and confirmation records are separate from optional measurement of a reader’s interests.
Newsletter consent does not authorize individual email engagement measurement. The Guide and newsletter signup form does not request or grant tracking consent. Brevo’s individual tracking is off for subscribers whose tracking consent is No or unknown; subscribing does not automatically change this to Yes.
You can withdraw any previously given tracking consent using the “Stop email engagement tracking” link in our emails or by contacting us. For other changes to your tracking preference, contact us. Withdrawing tracking consent does not unsubscribe you from the newsletter and does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal.
Website analytics and future tools
With your permission, we use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand readers’ interests and how our website is used, and to improve our articles and content.
GA4 uses first-party cookies containing browser identifiers. Depending on your consent and our settings, it records pages viewed, how you reached the site, visits and interactions, approximate location, and browser and device information. This information is sent to Google for processing and reports. Google states that GA4 does not log or store individual IP addresses.
We rely on your consent for this analytics. We load GA4 and use statistics cookies only after you agree. You can reject optional cookies or change or withdraw this choice through Cookie Settings in the footer. Opening Cookie Settings does not itself change your choice. Rejecting analytics does not prevent you from reading the site, subscribing to the newsletter or receiving the welcome Guide.
Microsoft Clarity and Brevo Tracker remain planned or under evaluation and are not enabled. The intended purposes are distinct: Clarity for usability analysis through heatmaps and session recordings; and Brevo Tracker for linking consented website activity with an identified subscriber’s interests. We will explain any tools we introduce and provide the required choices before enabling them.
Newsletter subscription does not itself authorize website analytics, session recording or identified profiling. Website analytics consent and Brevo email engagement consent are also separate: neither authorizes the other. We do not treat all analytics as exempt from consent requirements.
Cookies, scripts and external resources
The website uses WordPress and GeneratePress scripts for page presentation and navigation. The signup page loads Brevo’s form script and stylesheet from sibforms.com to display and process the subscription form.
We use Complianz to remember your cookie choices. For further details about cookies and how to manage them, see our Cookie Policy.
Some Guide and article images are delivered from cdn.shopify.com and images.penguinrandomhouse.com. When your browser requests a page or an externally hosted file, the receiving server receives connection information, including your IP address and the requested resource. An external image request is not, by itself, proof of behavioral tracking.
Retailer and other external links take you to services with their own privacy information. Disclosed affiliate links can contain referral parameters; they are separate from website analytics.
Service providers and international processing
We use Brevo for newsletter signup, double opt-in confirmation, subscription management and email delivery. We use SiteGround for website hosting and webmail. We use Google to provide Google Analytics 4 (GA4) through a dedicated Japan in Small Ways Analytics account. We have accepted Google’s data-processing terms for this Analytics account.
Brevo states that its database hosting is in the European Union, including France, Germany and Belgium. Database hosting alone does not establish where all subprocessors or support teams access information. Brevo’s published Data Processing Agreement and subprocessor list describe its international processing and contractual safeguards, including standard contractual clauses and supplementary measures. SiteGround’s data processing terms govern its processing for hosting and webmail. You can contact us for information about the safeguards applicable to your information.
All four optional data-sharing settings in our Google Analytics account are turned off: Google products and services, modeling contributions and business insights, technical support, and recommendations for our business. Google processes our website Analytics data to provide, maintain and protect the Analytics service. We do not enable optional sharing of that data to improve Google’s other products and services. These settings apply to data collected using Analytics; they do not cover information about our Analytics account or how we use the service. Google Signals, user-provided data collection and advertising personalization are disabled for our property, and it is not linked to Google Ads.
Information may be processed outside the United Kingdom. Google’s privacy information and data-protection terms explain its processing and applicable transfer safeguards.
How long we keep information
Subscription details are needed while we provide the newsletter. Following withdrawal, we stop using the details for the relevant marketing and retain only information justified for suppression, consent evidence, necessary support or legal purposes.
Retention depends on the purpose: unconfirmed signup attempts, delivery and engagement records, contact correspondence, security logs and backups have different needs. Information should be deleted or anonymized when no longer needed, subject to applicable legal obligations and verified backup arrangements.
Our GA4 settings retain event-level data for 14 months. User-level data is also set to 14 months, with “Reset user data on new activity” enabled. A new event from a returning user restarts the retention period for that user’s identifier. As a result, the identifier may be retained for longer than 14 months from the first visit if the user keeps returning; this reset does not extend the retention period of older event records.
These settings do not set a deletion deadline for standard aggregated reports. Cookie lifetimes are separate and are described in the Cookie Policy. These Analytics settings do not determine Google’s retention of information it uses as an independent controller; see Google’s privacy information.
Your rights and complaints
Depending on the processing, you may ask for access, correction, deletion, restriction or portability, and object to processing based on legitimate interests. You may withdraw consent and object to direct marketing. Use our Contact form or the email address in the “Who we are and how to contact us” section below. We may ask for proportionate information to verify a request and will respond within the applicable legal deadline.
You can contact us about a privacy concern and also complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office: Make a complaint.
Changes to this notice
Published: October 24, 2026. Last updated: October 29, 2026. We will update this notice when our processing changes and explain material changes where appropriate. The date of the latest update will be shown in this section.
Who we are and how to contact us
Japan in Small Ways is operated by Asuka Tsuchiya, a sole trader based in the United Kingdom. Asuka Tsuchiya is the controller of the personal information described in this notice.
For general inquiries, editorial corrections, privacy questions, or requests to access, correct or delete your personal information, please use our Contact form.
Show email address
Postal correspondence: PO Box 1808, Southampton, Hampshire, SO15 9GW, United Kingdom.
