Who we are
This is a bog-standard blog about hiking in general, but mostly about hiking along the Nakasendō in Japan.
Comments
When visitors (*you*) leave comments on the site it collects the data shown in the comments form, i.e. the stuff you type in and want to publish. It can’t be published unless we save the data. The site also saves your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. If this makes you uncomfortable, just don’t comment or share anything here. It’s not difficult.
A browser user agent string is an anonymized sequence of characters created from your email address (also called a hash). This string may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. (As if anyone ever reads those things…) After approval of your comment, your profile picture (if you have one) is visible to the public in the context of your comment. By the way, automattic is the company that owns Gravatar and WordPress, but also Tumblr, at least in 2026 when this is written. Don’t forget to head over to Tumblr.com for some Goncharov horse plinko Destiel-news baby-in-pelicans-mouth juggling stick figures Magical Girl nonsense when you’re finished here.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid including embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from any of the published images. Remember that the best way to avoid giving away your home address in this way to every stalker in the world is to not upload any media at all. If you’re worried and you don’t know how to strip location data from your photos just STOP SHARING THEM!
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles etc.). This content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These other websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that content, including tracking your interaction if you have an account and are logged in to that particular website. For instance, if you have a Facebook account (why?!?), and there is embedded content here from Facebook or any other kind of Meta platform product, (fat chance, but sometimes things might slip through), Meta can and will track you and everything you do until the end of time.
You can get rid of a lot, but not all of this kind of data collection by restricting “third-party cookies” in your browser. Also, please start using ad blockers in your browser, for instance uBlock Origin. This isn’t a paid endorsement. And also use the Waterfox browser instead of Chrome or Safari. (Edge in Windows is built on a Chrome base). Waterfox is a version of Firefox that strips away all the AI crap and other things to safeguard your privacy even further. Again, not a paid endorsement.
Yet another way to stop a lot of crap tracking you is to use pi-hole on your home network. With all that being said, this isn’t a site for tips and tricks for how to avoid being tracked on the net, and how to avoid invasive advertisment, but if you are one of the 0.1% of all visitors who have found your way to this privacy page of the website, chances are you are least nominally interested.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, that text and its metadata are retained indefinitely, or at least until the heat death of the universe. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. I.e. if you have commented successfully before, we trust you implicitly the next time. Neat, eh?
What rights you have over your data
This website is based in the EU. This means that GDPR applies here. You know about GDPR right? No? Ok, you can read all the 10 000 000 pages about it on this site: https://gdpr.eu/
But very very succinctly, if you for instance have left comments on this site you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where your data is sent
Visitor comments may be checked through automated spam detection services such as Akismet. They may also be checked manually by the admin, and if the comment you write is stupid, spammy, weird, and/or just annoying, it will probably be deleted before it ever sees the light of day. It’s not a right to be allowed to comment. If this makes you angry, please scream into THE VOID.