Privacy policy

Japan First Timer is run from the European Union and follows the GDPR. The short version: you can plan an entire trip here without telling us who you are, we never sell anything about you, and you can have whatever we do hold deleted by asking.

If you never sign in

You can generate a full itinerary without an account. When you do, we store the four answers you gave — trip length, arrival city, interests and daily budget — together with the plan that was written from them. We keep that so the page still works when you reload it or share the link, and so an identical request can reuse an existing plan instead of paying to write it twice. It is not connected to a name, an email address or an IP address.

Your IP address is used for one thing only: limiting how many plans can be generated from one connection per minute, so the service isn't drained by automated abuse. It is checked in memory and never written to our database.

We also record when someone follows a booking link — which kind of link, and where it pointed — and, if you leave feedback, whether you found the plan helpful plus any comment you wrote. Neither record carries anything identifying you.

If you sign in with Google

Signing in is entirely optional and exists for one reason: so your saved itineraries are still there on your next visit, and so you can share one by link. Google tells us your email address and an account identifier, and we store those alongside the itineraries you save. We do not get access to your Gmail, your contacts, your calendar or anything else in your Google account, and we never email you marketing.

Who else your data touches

• Anthropic — your four answers are sent to Claude, the AI that writes the plan. Your answers go; your identity does not, because we never had it unless you signed in, and we don't send it either way.
• Supabase — our database, hosted in Frankfurt, inside the EU. This is where saved itineraries live.
• Vercel — hosting, plus privacy-friendly page-view analytics that use no cookies and do not follow you across other websites.
• Google — only if you choose to sign in, and only to confirm that you are who you say you are.

Cookies

There is no advertising or tracking cookie on this site, and nothing here follows you elsewhere. The only cookie we ever set is the session cookie that keeps you signed in after you use Google — and it only exists if you sign in.

How long we keep things

Saved itineraries stay until you ask us to remove them. Reusable copies of generated plans expire after 30 days. Anonymous click and feedback records are kept as aggregate statistics about which recommendations work.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you, have it corrected, have it erased, take it elsewhere, or object to how we use it. Ask and we will do it — there is no form, no retention offer and no delay beyond the time it takes to find the records.

If we get it wrong, you also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

For anything on this page, or to have your data deleted, write to hello@firsttimerjapan.com. How we earn money is explained separately, in our affiliate disclosure.
Last updated 24 August 2026.