Privacy Policy

Why this page is written the way it is

Most of what people tell us is about land: where it lies, how far the water sits from the lowest corner, whether the soil stays wet in June. That is not sensitive in the legal sense, but it is still yours, and it often comes with a name, a phone number and a town. This policy describes what Pecan Riverbend does with those details under Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), in the order in which a message travels through our small office in Toyama.

The site itself is deliberately light. It has no user accounts, no shop, no embedded maps, no social-media buttons and no analytics or advertising scripts. Everything we hold about you, we hold because you wrote to us or booked something.

1. What reaches us

• The enquiry form on the home page. Name and email are required. Phone number, prefecture, town, approximate plot size, distance from the plot to the water and a free-text message are optional, and you may leave them empty.
• The message form on the contact page. Name, email, an optional subject and your message.
• Email and phone. If you write to info@pecan-riverbend.com or call +81 76-453-5307, we note what you tell us in the same way as a form message.
• Booking details. When you agree to a consultation, planting session or layout plan we also record the date, the address of the plot and the quote we sent you.
• Photos and drawings. Some owners send pictures of the riverbank or a sketch of the plot. We use them only for the advice you asked for.

Browsers also send basic technical information (the page requested, browser type, time) to whoever serves the files. We do not build profiles from it, and we do not run any tool on the pages that records your visit. Your cookie choice is kept in your own browser, as explained in the Cookie Policy.

2. What we use it for

• To answer you, usually by email, and to suggest which of our three services, if any, fits the plot you describe.
• To plan a site visit or planting day: dates, access, what to bring, who will be there.
• To prepare the written shortlist, planting sketch or layout plan, and to phone you a month after a planting session.
• To send an invoice and keep the accounting records that Japanese tax rules require.
• To deal with questions or complaints about work already done.

We do not use enquiries for newsletters unless you ask for one in your message. We do not sell, rent or trade contact details, and we do not pass them to nurseries or contractors on our own initiative. If we think a nursery could help, we tell you its name and let you decide whether to get in touch.

3. How long we keep it

• Enquiries that lead nowhere: deleted about twelve months after the last message, or sooner if you ask.
• Plot notes, shortlists and plans for clients: kept for as long as the trees you planted are young enough that you might want to ask a follow-up question, and in any case until you tell us to delete them.
• Invoices and payment records: kept for the period the tax rules require, currently up to seven years.

When a retention period ends we delete the email threads and files, or strip the name and contact details so that only the horticultural notes remain.

4. Who else may see it

Only the people at Pecan Riverbend who need to reply to you. Our email is provided by a mail service, and any bank used for your payment will see your name and the amount, as banks do. We may disclose information to a public authority when a law or a court order requires it. We do not transfer your details to other countries on purpose; if a mail service stores copies abroad, we choose providers that describe suitable safeguards and we treat that copy as part of the same message.

5. Keeping it safe

• Enquiries are read on devices protected by a password and a screen lock.
• We do not keep your details in paper notebooks that travel to the field. Site notes are written up the same day and the paper is shredded.
• If something goes wrong, for example a lost laptop or a mistaken email, we will work out what was exposed, tell the people affected and report to the Personal Information Protection Commission where the law asks us to.

6. Your rights

Under the APPI you may ask us to disclose the personal data we hold about you, to correct it if it is wrong, to stop using it or to delete it when the law allows. You may also ask for a copy of the data in a readable form. To do any of these, write to info@pecan-riverbend.com from the address you used before, or use the contact page. We may ask one or two questions to be sure it is really you, and we will reply within a reasonable time, usually within two weeks.

7. Children

The services are for landowners and are not aimed at children. If someone under eighteen writes to us, we answer politely but will not book work without a parent or the owner of the land involved.

8. Changes to this policy

If we start using a new tool, such as analytics or a different mail service, we will change this page before we switch it on, and the date at the top will move. Older wording is not kept online, but you may ask us what the policy said when you first wrote to us.

9. Questions

Write to Pecan Riverbend, 1-20-3 Sakuramachi, Toyama, Toyama 930-0003, Japan, or email info@pecan-riverbend.com. The same details, with the information we are required to show about the operator, are on the impressum and the notice under the Specified Commercial Transactions Act.