Terms & privacy

Terms of use

Who we are

Gilded Gate is a small independent travel site run by one person. “We” and “us” on this page means Gilded Gate. By using the site you agree to these terms.

What you're buying

• A single unlock ($4.99) gives you the full dossier for one gem: exact timing, the insider approach, what to avoid, the price breakdown and how to book.
• A trip pass ($19.99 or $29.99) unlocks every locked gem in the cities on your saved trip route at the moment you buy it. Gems we add to those cities later aren't included.
• Unlocks are tied to your account, not your browser, and stay yours for as long as Gilded Gate is running. It's a one-time payment, not a subscription.
• Payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card number.

Please don't share the paid content

Dossiers are for your own trip planning. Please don't copy, resell, republish or scrape them, or share your account. Sharing your trip with the share-link button is fine. Shared links only ever show locked gems by name and city.

Things change, so check before you go

We check prices, opening hours and booking rules against official Japanese sources, and each gem shows when it was last verified. But temples change their hours, prices go up and places close without warning. We can't promise every detail is still right on the day you visit. Double-check anything important, like a reservation or a last entry time, with the place itself before you rely on it. We're not responsible for closures, price changes, missed bookings or other travel costs.

You're responsible for your own safety and for following local rules, posted signs and staff instructions wherever you go.

Not affiliated

Gilded Gate is independent. We're not affiliated with, endorsed by or paid by any place, business, brand or company named on this site. Names are used only to say where something is.

Your account

You sign in with a link we email you, so keep that email account secure. We may suspend accounts that abuse the site, such as scraping dossiers or making fraudulent payments.

Limits

The site is provided “as is.” As far as the law allows, our total liability to you is limited to what you've paid us in the last 12 months. Nothing here takes away any rights you have under the consumer laws where you live.

Changes

If we change these terms, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Purchases you've already made keep the terms they were bought under.

Refunds

Because a dossier is delivered the moment you unlock it, purchases are normally final. There are two exceptions, and we're glad to honour them:

• We got it wrong. If a key fact in a dossier you bought (a price, opening hours, a closing day or a booking rule) was wrong or out of date when you bought it, we'll refund that unlock. For a trip pass, we'll refund $4.99 for each affected gem, up to the price you paid. We'll also fix the dossier, which is the whole point of Gilded Gate.
• You were charged by mistake, for example twice for the same thing.

Email support@thegildedgate.com within 30 days of buying, with the gem name and what was wrong. Refunds go back to the card you paid with, through Stripe, and usually show up within 5–10 business days.

Privacy

We collect as little as we can. We don't sell your data, show ads, or use tracking or advertising cookies.

What we store, and why

• Your email address, to send you sign-in links and to tie your purchases to your account.
• What you've bought: which gems, the Stripe payment reference, and when. Your card details stay with Stripe.
• Your trip plan: your route, stays, scheduled stops, bookings and the private notes you add. Only you can see it. If you create a share link, anyone with that link can see your stops and dates, but never your notes, stays or booking details. You can revoke a link at any time.

Stored in your browser only

Your quiz result and preferences, and the ticks on your pre-trip checklist, are saved in your own browser (local storage). They never reach our servers, and clearing your browser data removes them. We also use a sign-in cookie to keep you logged in. That's the only cookie we set.

Visitor statistics

We count page views with Vercel Web Analytics, so we know how many people visit and which pages they use. It uses no cookies and doesn't identify you: it records the page, the referring site, and your country, browser and device type. Before anything is sent, we remove anything private from the page address (such as payment references and shared-trip link codes).

Services we rely on

These companies process data on our behalf, only so the site can work:

• Supabase: accounts and the database
• Resend: sending sign-in emails
• Stripe: payments
• Vercel: hosting (it keeps standard server logs, such as IP addresses) and visitor statistics
• Mapbox: the maps (your browser loads map tiles directly from Mapbox)

Gem photos come from Wikimedia Commons and are stored on our own site. Opening one of their credit links, or a Google Maps directions link, takes you to that site under its own privacy policy.

Your choices

Email support@thegildedgate.com from your account's address to get a copy of your data or to delete your account. Deleting it removes your trip plan, share links and purchase history. We keep payment records only where the law requires it, for example for tax.

Gilded Gate isn't meant for children under 16.