This Privacy Policy explains what information Mobile Start Japan (https://mobile-start.jp/) receives, how that information is used and what choices you have. It applies to this website only.
Who runs this site
Mobile Start Japan is run personally by Takahiko Tanaka, a Rakuten Group employee. It is an independent website, not an official Rakuten Mobile website. The site explains the Rakuten Mobile employee referral campaign for English speakers who live in Japan or are preparing to move here. You can read more on the About page.
In this policy, “I” and “me” refer to Takahiko Tanaka as the operator of this site.
I also run rmobile-start.com, a separate Japanese-language website with its own privacy policy. This policy covers mobile-start.jp only.
Information you send me
If you use the contact form, you enter the following, all of which are required:
- Your name
- Your email address
- A subject
- Your message
The form sends this information to me by email. If you email contact@mobile-start.jp directly, I receive your email address, your message and anything else you include.
I use this information to read and reply to your message, to correct or update pages on this site when you report a problem, and to keep a record of our correspondence.
Please do not send passwords, verification codes, Rakuten ID login details, identity documents such as a residence card or passport, or credit card or bank details. This site does not need any of them. Questions about your own Rakuten Mobile account should go to Rakuten Mobile’s official support channels.
Technical information
When you visit any website, your browser sends technical information such as your IP address, browser type and the address of the page you requested. The servers and services that deliver this site may process and record this kind of information in order to deliver pages, keep the site running and protect it from misuse.
Analytics
I use two analytics services to understand how visitors use this site and to improve the guides.
Google Analytics
I use Google Analytics 4, a service provided by Google, to see which pages are read, how visitors arrive at the site and which links they click.
Google Analytics uses cookies and similar identifiers to measure visits. The information collected can include the pages you view, how long you stay, the website that referred you, your approximate location, your device and browser type, and interactions such as link clicks. According to Google, Google Analytics does not log or store IP addresses, although Google uses IP addresses to provide and protect the service and to estimate where visitors are located.
Google processes this data to provide the Google Analytics service. For details, see how Google Analytics safeguards data, how Google uses information from sites that use its services and the Google Privacy Policy.
Microsoft Clarity
I use Microsoft Clarity, a service provided by Microsoft, to see how visitors interact with pages: for example, where they click, how far they scroll and where a page may be hard to use.
Clarity captures the content of the pages you view on this site and your actions on them, such as mouse movements, clicks, taps and scrolling. It uses this to produce heatmaps and session replays. A session replay is a reconstruction of your visit, built from the page content and the recorded actions. It is not a video of your screen, and it covers only pages on this site.
Clarity masks text that you type into input fields, including the fields of the contact form.
Clarity uses first-party cookies, such as _clck and _clsk, and Microsoft third-party cookies, such as MUID. Microsoft also collects and uses data gathered through Clarity under its own privacy statement, and Microsoft describes cookies such as MUID as being used for purposes that include advertising and site analytics. For details, see the cookies used by Clarity and the Microsoft Privacy Statement.
According to Microsoft, Clarity keeps recordings for 30 days, although recordings marked as favorites and a random sample of recordings may be kept for up to 9 months.
Cookies and your choices
Cookies are small files that a website stores in your browser. On this site, cookies are used by Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity as described above.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. You can still read this site with cookies blocked.
On a supported browser, you can install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on to prevent supported Google Analytics JavaScript from sharing information about your visits with Google Analytics.
According to Microsoft, Clarity does not set cookies if your browser has cookies disabled.
Service providers and processing outside Japan
This site relies on outside service providers, including web hosting, email, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity. These providers process information to provide their services to me, and some of them also use information for their own purposes as described in their own privacy policies.
Some of these providers may store or process information outside Japan. Google may process Google Analytics data on servers outside Japan, including in the United States. Microsoft stores Clarity data in its Azure cloud service, and it may be processed outside Japan, including in the United States.
The employee referral link and other websites
This site includes my Rakuten Mobile employee referral link. Referral login, mobile plan applications and campaign rewards are handled through Rakuten’s official procedures. This website does not ask you to enter Rakuten account credentials, submit identity verification documents or provide payment details for a mobile plan application.
Information you give Rakuten is handled under Rakuten’s own policies. See the Rakuten Mobile Privacy Policy and the Rakuten Group Privacy Policy.
Other links on this site, such as links to official campaign pages, also lead to websites with their own privacy policies. This policy does not apply to those websites.
How I store and protect information
Messages sent through the contact form or by email are stored in the email account I use for this site. I read them myself and keep them for as long as they are useful for replying, handling corrections and keeping a record of feedback about the site.
I do not sell the information you send me. I take reasonable care to protect it, but no method of sending or storing information online is completely secure.
Questions about your information
If you have a question about information you have sent me, or you would like me to correct or delete your messages, please contact me at contact@mobile-start.jp or through the contact form.
For information held by Rakuten Mobile, such as your contract or application details, please contact Rakuten Mobile directly. Those records are not held by this site.
Changes to this policy
I will update this policy when the way this site handles information changes, for example when I add or remove a service. The date below shows when the policy was last updated.
Last updated: September 23, 2026