Last updated: September 1, 2026
Cookies are small text files a website asks your browser to store. Some are needed for a site to work at all; others exist to count visitors or to sell advertising. This page lists what japanknowhow.com/ uses, sorted by category, and how to switch off the parts you don't want.
Categories we use
| Category | What it does | Set by | Typical lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | Keeps the site working: security, load balancing, and remembering your cookie choices so we don’t ask again on every page | Us | Session to 12 months |
| Preferences | Remembers small choices you make — a display setting, a tool option, a dismissed notice | Us | Up to 12 months |
| Analytics | Counts visits and tells us which articles get read and how people found them. Aggregate, not individual | Third party | Up to 24 months |
| Advertising | Lets ad networks measure impressions and, where you’ve allowed it, show ads based on your browsing across sites | Third party | Up to 24 months |
Strictly necessary cookies are set without asking, because the site can’t function without them. Everything else waits for your consent, and you can change your mind at any time.
What our tools store — and what they don’t
This is the part we’d want to know as readers, so we’ll be specific. The name converter, Chinese zodiac calculator, phrasebook, and era converter run entirely in your browser. If one of them remembers something — a recent lookup, an audio setting — it’s kept in your browser’s local storage on your own device.
Nothing you type into a tool is sent to us. Names, birth dates, and search terms never reach our servers, so no cookie of ours carries them and no third party receives them. Clearing your browser data clears them completely.
Third parties
Cookies in the analytics and advertising categories are set by outside companies, not by us, and they’re governed by those companies’ own privacy policies. Advertising partners may combine what they see here with what they see on other sites in order to build an advertising profile. That’s precisely what the advertising category consent controls.
Under California law this kind of ad-network activity can count as “sharing” personal information even though no money changes hands. We honor the Global Privacy Control signal: if your browser sends GPC, we treat it as an opt-out and don’t load advertising cookies, whatever the banner says.
How to control cookies
- On this site. Use the cookie settings link in the footer to change your consent at any time. Withdrawing consent stops new non-essential cookies from being set.
- In your browser. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge all let you block or delete cookies, either entirely or per site. Look for “Cookies and site data” in privacy settings.
- With an extension. A content blocker or privacy extension will stop most analytics and advertising cookies before they load.
- Industry opt-outs. The Digital Advertising Alliance, the Network Advertising Initiative, and Your Online Choices in Europe each run opt-out pages covering many ad networks at once.
Blocking analytics and advertising cookies doesn’t break anything here. Every article and every tool works the same. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may mean the site asks about cookies on every page, because the answer no longer gets remembered.
Changes
When the set of cookies we use changes materially, we update this page and the date at the top.
Questions
Write to hello@japanknowhow.com. Our broader privacy policy covers what we do with information generally, and the contact page has everything else.