This Privacy Policy explains what information Michi to Japan collects, why, how it is used and stored, and the choices you have. It describes how the service works today; we will update it if that changes.
1. Information we collect
Account information. Your name, email address, and password. Passwords are stored only as a one-way hash, not in readable form.
Profile details. Your home country and time zone, which you give us when you join the waitlist or finish setting up your account.
Learning information. Your lesson progress and completion, the answers you submit to exercises, the grading and feedback returned, and any messages you send to your teacher about a submission.
AI conversation data. The messages you send to the AI conversation partner ใๆใ and its replies.
Community and travel content. Chat messages, reactions, destinations you add, travel experiences and reviews, and photos you upload.
Bookings and requests. Weekly session bookings, and details you send through forms such as the waitlist and Premium application (name, email, and your message).
Subscription information. Whether you have a subscription, its status, its current billing period, whether it is set to cancel, and whether the waitlist discount applies. Your card details are handled by Stripe and are not stored by us.
Michi Private Course. If you buy Michi Private Course: the dates of your course and the lessons you book. If you learn with a second person, we keep that person's name and email address and send them an email to join. Your card details are handled by Stripe and are not stored by us.
Partner chat. The messages between a student and a Japanese partner, with the time they were sent. This includes voice messages (your recorded voice), which are deleted 7 days after they are sent. The teacher can read all of these messages. If you sign up as a Japanese partner: your name, email address, a short sentence about yourself, your date of birth (to check that you are 18 or older; only Michi sees it), your reason for signing up, and whether you speak English. Reports about a chat are kept for one year.
Dictionary. The words and notes you save in your own dictionary (the word, how to read it, what it means, where you learned it, and a short note). Only you can see them. You can change or delete them at any time, and they are deleted when your account is deleted.
Sharing choice. If you choose to let Michi feature your lesson essays and recordings, we store that choice: whether it is given or withdrawn, how your name may be shown (full name, initials, or no name), the date, and the Terms version. Your essays and recordings are visible to the teacher in the Teacher Console.
Agreement records. When you agreed to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and which versions.
Technical information. Like most websites, our hosting provider processes technical data needed to serve the site, such as your IP address, browser and device information, and the pages requested. We do not store your IP address in our own database.
Visit statistics. When you open a page of the site, or press an important link (for example a link to another website, or the Website or Reserve button of a place on the map), we count it. We keep a scrambled version (a hash) of a random number that is stored in a cookie in your browser, the country you are in (two letters, worked out from your connection; we do not keep your IP address), the kind of device (phone, tablet or computer), the page, the link, where you came from (for example Instagram or a search engine) and the time. If you are signed in, the count is connected to your account. We do not count the visits of the teacher, and we do not count visitors whose browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal.
Reason for leaving. When you cancel your subscription or close your account, we ask you to choose a reason from a list, and to write one sentence if you choose โOtherโ. Michi reads these answers to understand why members leave and to improve the service.
Year of birth. When you create an account, we ask for your year of birth once. It is used only to count how many learners are in each age group. Nobody else can see it.
2. Why we collect it, and how we use it
- To create and secure your account and let you sign in
- To provide the lessons, grade your answers, unlock lessons, and show your progress
- To provide AI conversation practice and other AI-assisted features
- To run the community, the countryside pages, and weekly sessions
- To process subscriptions, apply discounts, and manage cancellations
- To respond to your requests and questions, including password reset requests
- To send you account emails (a welcome message and password reset links) and to tell you when the course opens
- To run the partner chat, keep students and partners safe, and deal with reports
- To keep your own dictionary for you
- To send paid members a weekly study reminder email while they are away from the lessons. They can stop it with one click.
- To understand why members cancel or close their account, so that we can improve the service
- To understand how many people visit, from which countries and through which links, which pages and links are used, and how old our learners are, so that we can improve the service and decide how to promote it. We may show businesses totals and percentages (for example, how many people visited from Japan in a month). We do not show them records of individual people.
- To keep the service secure, prevent misuse, and enforce our Terms
- To meet legal obligations
3. What other people can see
- World map. Your name, home country, and number of completed lessons may appear as a pin on the world map, which is visible on the public home page.
- Community content. Chat messages, travel posts, reviews, and your display name are visible to other signed-in members. Next to your name in the chat, members also see where you are on the course journey (a car, plane, ship, bicycle, or Japan icon based on how many lessons you have completed) and your INAKA stars โ one per countryside post you have written, becoming an "INAKA Master" badge at 100 posts. Diary and recommendation pages written by Michi are public.
- Work you chose to share. Only if you gave the optional permission in the Terms (section 14), your lesson essays and voice recordings may be published on the Michi to Japan website and on social media, with your name shown only the way you chose. You can withdraw at any time on your Account page. Without that permission, your essays and recordings are visible only to you and the teacher.
- Partner chat. A student sees the name of their partner and the short sentence the partner wrote about themselves (and whether the partner speaks English). A partner sees the name of their student. Michi can read every message and listen to every voice message. Nobody else can.
- Dictionary. Only you can see your dictionary.
- Photos. Photos you upload are served from a web address that is hard to guess but is not password-protected; anyone who has the link to a photo can view it.
Please do not post personal information you do not want others to see.
4. How information is stored and protected
Account and course data is stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted by Neon. The website runs on Vercel. Photos you upload are stored in that database. Passwords are stored as one-way hashes. Sign-in uses a session token kept in a cookie in your browser. We limit access to administrative functions to the teacher account. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
5. Services that process information for us
- Stripe processes subscription payments and issues receipts. When you subscribe, your email address and account identifier are shared with Stripe, and you enter your card details on Stripe's secure page. Stripe's use of your information is described in its own privacy policy.
- Anthropic is the AI provider behind our AI features (see section 6).
- Resend delivers our emails. To send you a welcome message, a password reset link, or the course announcement, your name and email address are shared with Resend, which processes them under its own privacy policy. If you would rather not receive emails from us beyond password resets, reply to any of them or write to us and we will stop.
- Cloudflare Stream delivers the lesson videos. When you play a video, your browser connects to Cloudflare, which receives technical data such as your IP address and device information, and processes it under its own privacy policy. We do not send your name or email address to Cloudflare.
- Neon hosts our database and Vercel hosts and delivers the website, including standard request logs.
- Google Fonts. Your browser loads the site's fonts from Google's font service, which means your browser sends a request (including its IP address) to Google when a page loads.
We do not sell your personal information.
6. AI processing
Our AI features use models from Anthropic, accessed through Anthropic's API. When you use them, the relevant text is sent to Anthropic to generate a response:
- Conversation with ๆ. Your message, your recent conversation history with ๆ, and the list of lessons you have completed (so ๆ only uses what you have learned).
- Grading. The exercise questions and the answers you submit.
- Lesson content. Some lessons are prepared with AI; this uses lesson topics and does not include your personal information.
We store your conversations with ๆ and your graded submissions in our database so you can see your history. How Anthropic handles data sent through its API is governed by Anthropic's own terms and privacy policy. Please do not share sensitive personal information in your messages to ๆ. AI-generated responses are provided for educational purposes and may occasionally contain errors.
7. Cookies and analytics
We use the cookies that are needed to keep you signed in and to protect sign-in requests. We also use two small cookies for our visit statistics: one holds the random visitor number, the other remembers your answer if you were asked whether we may count your visit. Both last one year. We count visits only in our own database; we do not send them to an analytics company, and we do not use advertising cookies. If you are in the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we count your visit only after you say yes. You can say no, and you can delete the cookies in your browser at any time. If that changes, we will update this policy.
8. How long we keep information
We keep your account information, learning history, and content for as long as your account exists. Class chat messages are deleted automatically 5 days after they are posted. If you close your account, you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for, and we keep your data for one more month so that you can come back. After that month, we delete your account and the content linked to it: your lesson progress and answers, your recordings, your conversations with ๆ, your chat messages, travel posts and photos, and the sign-up and contact requests saved under your email address. We keep only the information we must keep for legal or accounting reasons. Payment records held by Stripe are kept by Stripe under its own policies.
Partner chat: the messages of a chat are deleted when the chat ends (you get a different partner, or your membership ends), and voice messages are deleted 7 days after they are sent. A chat with a report that Michi has not handled yet is kept until she has. Reports about a chat are deleted one year after they were made (a report that Michi has not handled yet is kept until she has). A partner's date of birth is kept as long as the partner's account exists. Your dictionary is deleted when your account is deleted.
Visit statistics are deleted one year after they were recorded. The reason you give when you cancel your subscription is kept after your account is deleted, no longer linked to you.
9. Account and data deletion, and your rights
You can close your account yourself at the bottom of your Account page (see section 8). You can also ask us to delete your account and data, or ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, by emailing michinihongokyoshitsu@gmail.com from the address linked to your account. Depending on where you live, applicable law may also give you the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict the use of your information, to object to certain uses, or to complain to your local data protection authority. We will respond as required by applicable law.
10. Children
The service is intended for people age 15 or older. If you believe a younger child has given us personal information, please contact us so we can address it.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy when needed. The date at the top shows when it was last updated, and we will let users know of material changes where appropriate.
12. Contact
Privacy questions and requests: michinihongokyoshitsu@gmail.com. See also our Terms of Service.