Privacy policy

Lohus Co., Ltd. ("we", "us") handles personal information in line with Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) and, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with and how you can ask us about it.

1. Who we are

• Business operator: Lohus Co., Ltd.
• Address: 4F, Nihonodori 7 Bldg., 7 Nihonodori, Naka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 231-0021, Japan
• Representative: Martin Chen
• Contact for personal information: privacy@lohus.jp

2. Information we collect

• Contact details: name, email address, phone number, and how you prefer us to reply (email, LINE or WhatsApp).
• Enquiry and booking details: stay dates, number of guests, the homes you are interested in, and your messages to us.
• Screening and contract details for monthly stays: a photo ID (passport, residence card or another official ID), proof of employment or school enrolment, your address and emergency contact, and the signed rental contract.
• Guest register details for short stays, which Japan's Hotel Business Act and Private Lodging Business Act require us to record: name, address and contact details (and occupation, where the law still requires it), and for guests without an address in Japan, nationality and passport number together with a copy of the passport.
• Payment details: payments are processed by payment providers. We receive confirmation of payment but do not store full card numbers.
• Technical data: IP address, browser type, device and language settings, and the pages you visit.

We do not collect your My Number (Individual Number). If you show a My Number card as photo ID, we do not record the number.

3. How we use it

• To answer enquiries and suggest homes.
• To check applications, prepare and manage rental contracts and bookings, and handle check-in and check-out.
• To take payments, issue receipts and keep accounting records.
• To support you during your stay, including maintenance and emergencies.
• To keep guest registers and meet other legal obligations, and to answer lawful requests from public authorities.
• To keep the website and our services secure and to improve them.
• To send news and offers, only if you agree; you can stop them at any time.

4. Sharing with third parties

We do not give personal information to third parties without your consent, except where the law allows it, for example when required by law, to protect someone's life, body or property, or to cooperate with public authorities.

With your consent, we share the details needed with:

• the owner of a home advertised at the owner's request (and the owner's management company), when you enquire about or apply for that home, so that they can review your application and sign the contract with you;
• booking platforms you book through, for that booking.

We also entrust the handling of personal information to service providers who work for us, such as website hosting, cloud databases, email, electronic signature, messaging and payment processing. We choose them carefully, give them only what they need, and supervise how they handle it.

We do not sell personal information.

5. Information handled outside Japan

Some of our service providers store or process personal information outside Japan, mainly in the United States, the European Union and Israel (for example our website platform, cloud database and payment providers). We use providers that protect personal information to a standard equivalent to the APPI, for example under their contract with us and their own privacy programmes. Information about the personal information protection systems of other countries is published by Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission. Ask us at privacy@lohus.jp and we will tell you more about these providers and the measures we take.

6. How we keep it safe

• Rules: we have rules on how personal information is collected, used, stored, shared and deleted, and a person responsible for applying them.
• People: everyone who handles personal information is bound to confidentiality and trained in these rules.
• Physical security: paper documents and devices are kept where only authorised people can reach them, and are disposed of securely.
• Technical security: access is limited to the people who need it, accounts are protected by authentication, connections are encrypted, and systems are protected against unauthorised access and malware.
• Abroad: where information is stored outside Japan, we check the country's personal information protection system and take security measures that suit it.

7. How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purpose it was collected for, or as long as the law requires: for example, guest registers for three years and accounting records for seven years. Then we delete it or make it anonymous.

8. Your requests

You can ask us to tell you the purposes of use of your personal information; disclose it to you (including electronically); correct, add to or delete it; stop using or erase it; stop sharing it with third parties; and disclose records of sharing it with third parties. Email privacy@lohus.jp. We will confirm your identity and reply without undue delay. There is no fee. If we cannot do what you ask, we will tell you why.

9. If you are in the EU or EEA

We process your personal data to perform a contract with you, to meet legal obligations, for our legitimate interests (such as security and improving our services), and with your consent (such as marketing). You have the right to access, correct and erase your data, to restrict or object to processing, to receive it in a portable form, to withdraw consent at any time, and to complain to your local supervisory authority. Where your data is transferred outside the EU, we use appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

10. Cookies and analytics

lohus.jp uses the cookies needed for the website to work, for example to remember your language. We count visits with the statistics built into our website platform, Wix, which uses a short-lived session cookie; it does not tell us who you are. We do not use advertising cookies. You can block cookies in your browser settings, but some parts of the website may then not work.

11. Questions and complaints

Please contact us at privacy@lohus.jp or by post at the address above.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. We will post the new version on this page with its effective date, and announce important changes in advance.

This policy is published in Japanese, English and Traditional Chinese. If the versions differ, the Japanese version prevails.