Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 17, 2026 · Effective: October 21, 2026

This policy explains how JSTARs Inc. (SHOKU NOREN, “we”, “us”) handles the personal data of people who use our reservation service and our free membership. It is written to reflect our actual practice; it is not legal advice.

1. What we collect

  1. Contact details — your name and email address. We ask for your phone number only when you submit a reservation request, so that we can reach you on the day of the meal.
  2. Reservation details — the restaurant(s) or experience you request, dates, party size, meal, and any free-text notes you provide.
  3. Dietary and access notes — allergies or other requirements, only if you choose to tell us. See Section 1.7 on sensitive information.
  4. Dining card (optional) — if you make a Japanese dining card, the allergies and dietary needs you choose for yourself and for any companions you add, and any names you enter. We use it only to show your card and to tell restaurants when we book for you. See Section 1.7.
  5. Payment card — collected and stored by our payment processor, Stripe. We never see or store your full card number; we hold only a token that lets us charge the card as described in our Terms.
  6. Basic technical data — standard server logs and aggregate analytics.
  7. How you arrived (attribution data) — the site that referred you, campaign tags in the link you followed (utm parameters), the page you landed on and, if you came from an ad, the ad click identifier (for example, Google Ads’ gclid). We keep this in a small cookie for up to 30 days and record it with your request or account, so that we can measure which of our marketing works. We use it only in aggregate for that purpose.
  8. Sensitive information (optional) — foods you can’t eat, including allergies and religious or other dietary restrictions, can reveal information about your health or beliefs. Giving it is always optional. With your consent, we use it only to arrange your meals, and we share it with a restaurant only when it is needed for a booking. You may leave it blank and tell the restaurant directly on the day. If you add companions to a dining card, you confirm that they have agreed to share this information with us and with restaurants. You can remove any companion at any time, and deleting your account deletes the card.

Account (free membership) data

To create a free account we require only your email address and your country of residence (used to confirm that the service is for travellers living outside Japan, and for tax classification). We do not collect your nationality. We keep the houses you save and your alert settings. You may also add, if you wish, an optional profile: your travel dates, the regions you plan to visit, the cuisines you like, your budget per person, whether you prefer lunch or dinner, your experience of dining in Japan, who you are travelling with, and foods you can’t eat. We use the profile, the houses you save and the restaurants you request as described in Section 2.8, and you can edit or delete any of it on your account page at any time. Sign-in is by emailed link or code; we store a hashed token and a session cookie on your device (up to 90 days). When you join, we also record whether you agreed to our monthly email of restaurant picks and news, when you agreed, the wording you were shown and the country you selected.

2. Why we use it, and our legal basis

  1. To arrange and confirm your reservation, and to contact you about it (performance of our contract with you).
  2. To charge the booking fee on confirmation, any cancellation charge, and any individually quoted arrangement you have agreed, per our Terms and Cancellation Policy (performance of contract).
  3. To keep records required for accounting, tax and dispute handling (our legitimate interests and legal obligations).
  4. Release alerts. Release alerts for the houses you save are service emails that are part of the free membership you asked for (performance of contract); you can turn them off for any house, or entirely, from your account page. Submitting a reservation request does not by itself add you to our monthly picks or any newsletter: you receive them only if you agree on the form.
  5. Monthly picks and news from SHOKU NOREN and JSTARs, and selected partners, with your consent. Once a month we send restaurant picks matched to the houses, regions and cuisines you save — houses about to open their books and houses that are easier to book — together with news from SHOKU NOREN. JSTARs Inc. also runs restaurants and other hospitality businesses in Japan and abroad; these appear in a separate section of the email, labelled as restaurants of our group. From time to time we also carry paid announcements from restaurants and services in Japan that we have chosen. Only if you agree — with the box on the sign-up form, on the request form or on your account page — we use your contact details, dining preferences (including those described in Section 2.8) and travel dates to send you these emails and to choose what they contain (for example, an invitation when you are visiting a city where one of these houses is). The box is unticked by default if you select a country in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom; elsewhere it is ticked by default, and you can untick it before you continue. We record when you agreed, the wording you were shown and the country you selected. We send these messages ourselves; advertisers never receive your data. Each message identifies us as the sender, says who paid for any paid announcement and carries an unsubscribe link. Your consent is the legal basis; you can withdraw it at any time from your account page or by email, and doing so never affects your reservation or your membership. Release alerts are a separate setting and carry no paid announcements.
  6. To measure which of our marketing brings guests and members, using attribution data (our legitimate interest in understanding our own marketing).
  7. To arrange your meals using the sensitive information you choose to give us (your consent, which you may withdraw at any time by deleting it from your account or by email).
  8. Your dining preferences. From the houses you save, the restaurants you request and your optional profile (including your budget per person), we form a view of the kind of dining you enjoy — the regions, cuisines and price range that suit you. We use it to tailor your release alerts and recommendations and to improve our service (our legitimate interest in offering relevant recommendations; you may object at any time, see Section 5). Only if you have agreed to our monthly email (Section 2.5), we also use it to choose which picks and announcements from SHOKU NOREN, the JSTARs group and selected partners to send you. We do not use it to make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you, and it never affects your reservations or the fees you pay. Sensitive information (Section 1.7) is not used for this purpose.
  9. If you send us comments about a restaurant or our service, we may publish them on our site without your name or anything that identifies you; tell us if you would rather we did not.

3. Who we share it with

  1. The restaurant, once your booking proceeds — your name, party size, phone number, and any dietary notes needed for the booking. Nothing more than the reservation requires.
  2. Our processors, who handle data on our behalf under contract: Stripe (payments), Resend (transactional email), Vercel (hosting), Neon (our database), and Google Workspace (our email). Some of these operate outside Japan, so your data may be transferred and processed abroad under appropriate safeguards.
  3. Advertising measurement — if you arrive from one of our ads, the ad platform (for example, Google Ads) learns through its tag on our site whether your visit led to a request or sign-up. We do not send it your name, email or reservation details.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for third-party marketing. Partners whose announcements we carry never receive your name, contact details or any information about you as an individual: we choose who receives an announcement ourselves, and we may tell a partner only aggregate figures, such as how many members it was sent to. Where you have given the consent described in Section 2.5 and one of our restaurants is operated by a JSTARs group company, that company may receive your name, contact details and dining preferences for the purpose you consented to; JSTARs Inc. remains responsible for the data.

4. How long we keep it

  1. If a request closes without a confirmed booking — no table was secured, you declined or withdrew it, or we declined the request — we delete or de-identify the request details, including any dietary notes, on a routine basis.
  2. For confirmed bookings and other paid arrangements, we keep the records for as long as needed to provide the service and to meet accounting and legal obligations, then delete them.
  3. Account data (your profile, saved houses and alert settings) is kept while your account is open. You can delete your account at any time from your account page or by email; we then close it at once, stop all emails to you, and on a routine basis delete or de-identify your profile, including any sensitive information, keeping only the records we are required to keep by law (such as records of charges).
  4. Card tokens are held by Stripe and removed when they are no longer needed. For a confirmed booking, we keep the card token and your booking and contact details until the day after your visit, or until any amount due has been paid, whichever is later, even if you close your account. We then remove the card token.

5. Your choices and rights

You can ask us to access, correct, or delete your personal data, or to stop using it, by writing to concierge@shokunoren.com. Depending on where you live, local law (such as the EU/UK GDPR, or Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information) may give you additional rights; we honour them. We will respond within a reasonable time. You may object to our use of your dining preferences (Section 2.8) by writing to us. You can stop our monthly email at any time from your account page or with the unsubscribe link in each email; from then on we no longer use your preferences to choose picks or announcements for you.

6. Security

Card data is handled entirely by Stripe (PCI-compliant) and never reaches our servers. We limit access to the rest of your data to the people who need it to arrange your booking.

7. Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: concierge@shokunoren.com, JSTARs Inc., Tokyo, Japan.