Privacy policy

Aoi's Japanese School Lunch (japanese-school-lunch.com) is the English site of あおいの給食室, the Japanese recipe site of Aoi, a licensed Japanese nutritionist (kanri eiyoshi). This page explains what information is collected when you visit, and the choices you have.

What we do not collect

There are no accounts, sign-up forms, comments or payments on this site. We do not ask for your name or email address, we do not show advertising, and we do not sell or share personal information. The optional Recipe Helper chat is described below.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4, a service from Google, to understand which recipes and articles are read and how visitors find them (for example from a search engine or from our YouTube videos). It records things like the pages you view, your approximate location (country or city), your device and browser type, and the site that referred you. Google Analytics 4 does not log or store IP addresses. We use this information only in aggregate, to decide which recipes to translate and improve.

Google Analytics uses cookies (named _ga and _ga_…) to recognise repeat visits. Advertising features are switched off: we never allow advertising cookies or ad personalization.

• If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, analytics cookies are off until you choose "Accept" in the cookie notice. Until then, Google receives only basic, cookieless signals that do not identify you or your device.
• Everywhere else, analytics cookies are on by default, and you can turn them off at any time.

Change your cookie settings

You can also install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or block cookies in your browser settings. Google's use of the data is described in How Google uses information from sites that use its services and the Google Privacy Policy. Analytics data is kept for no longer than 14 months.

Recipe Helper (AI chat)

The Recipe Helper button opens an AI assistant that searches the recipes on this site. Its answers are written by an AI model, not by Aoi, and nobody checks them before you see them. It is optional: nothing you type is sent anywhere until you choose "Start chatting" and send a message.

• What is sent: the messages you type, together with the earlier messages of the same chat (up to the last eight), are sent from our server to Anthropic PBC, a US company that provides the AI model, so it can write an answer. If you mentioned avoiding egg, milk or wheat, a baby under 1, gluten or a school-age child, your browser keeps that note for the current chat and sends it with each message, so the helper keeps filtering recipes. Your IP address and cookies are not sent to Anthropic.
• What Anthropic does with it: under its commercial terms, Anthropic does not use these messages to train its models, and deletes them within 30 days. It may keep a conversation for up to 2 years if it is flagged for a possible violation of its usage policy, or longer where required by law. See Anthropic's data retention page.
• What we keep: our server does not store the text of your messages or the answers. To prevent abuse, it turns your IP address into a scrambled code, using a random value that is replaced every day, and counts how many messages arrive with each code. The codes, counts and random value are normally deleted the next day. We also keep daily totals for the whole site (number of messages, searches and errors, and the cost) for up to 90 days; these contain nothing about individual visitors.
• Google Analytics: Google Analytics (described above, with the same cookie choices) also records when the helper is opened or started, when a message is sent, and which recipe card is clicked. It never receives the text of your messages or the answers.
• If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland: Anthropic processes your messages on our behalf, as our processor, under its Data Processing Addendum, which includes the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK and Swiss transfer terms for transfers outside your country. Information about a food allergy is sent only if you choose to type it.
• In your browser: the current chat is kept in your browser tab (session storage) so it survives moving between pages, and disappears when you close the tab or choose "Start a new chat". Your choice to start chatting is remembered in local storage.
• Fridge photos: if you choose "Snap your fridge", the photo you pick is made smaller in your browser and sent from our server to Anthropic only to list the ingredients it shows. Our server does not store the photo; Anthropic handles it as described above. Please don't photograph people or documents.
• Feedback: if you use "Send feedback", the text you write is stored on our server so the site team can read it, without your IP address or any other details, for up to 90 days (at most the latest 1,000 messages). Please don't include your name, email address or other personal details.
• Menu tools: browsing recipes, the fridge search, lunch cards, the shopping list and meal plans send only your choices (such as "main dish" and "chicken", the ingredients you type, or recipe numbers) and any allergy or diet setting to our server, which looks them up in the recipe list and keeps nothing. To show the latest video, our server reads the public feed of our YouTube channel; your browser contacts YouTube only if you open the video.
• Saved in your browser: your favorites, shopping list (including recipes you add with "Add to shopping list" on a recipe page), meal plans and meal calendar, lunch cards, family size and allergy and diet settings are saved only in your own browser (local storage). They are not sent to us except as described above, and you can delete them with "Clear my saved data" in the Menu's settings or by clearing your browser's site data.
• Please don't share personal details such as your child's name, school or health records. If you mention a food allergy so the helper can filter recipes, that information is used only to answer you, as described above.

The Recipe Helper can make mistakes. Always read the full recipe and check product labels yourself, and ask a doctor about allergies or health questions.

YouTube videos

Some recipe pages show a cooking video from our YouTube channel. The player is loaded in YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), so YouTube does not store cookies for the video until you play it. When you play a video, YouTube (Google) processes information under the Google Privacy Policy.

Fonts and hosting

The site's text font is loaded from Google Fonts, which means your browser connects to Google's servers and Google can see your IP address. The site is hosted by ConoHa WING (GMO Internet Group, Japan), whose servers keep standard access logs, including IP addresses, for security and operation.

Children

This site is written for parents and other adults who cook for children. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children.

Your rights and contact

Because we do not hold personal information that identifies you, most requests can be handled by changing your cookie settings above. For any other question about this policy, please use the contact form on あおいの給食室 (the form is in Japanese; you may write in English).

Changes

If we change how we collect information, we will update this page and the date at the top.