Advertising & Affiliate Disclosure

MICHI is a free publication. Keeping it free costs money, so this page sets out exactly where that money comes from and what it is not allowed to influence. If you only read one line: nobody can pay us to be recommended.

1. Display advertising

MICHI carries display advertising served by Google AdSense. Those ads are selected automatically by Google, not chosen by us, and their presence on a page has no bearing on the content of that page. We do not know in advance which advertiser will appear beside which guide, and advertisers have no access to our editorial process.

Advertising cookies and your choices about personalised ads are covered in section 4 of our Privacy Policy.

2. Affiliate links

MICHI does not currently use affiliate links. The outbound links in our guides — Google Maps, Tabelog, official venue sites — are there because they are the fastest way for you to check an address, a rating, or an opening time. We earn nothing when you click them.

If that changes, we will say so here and mark affected links within the articles themselves before any commission is earned. We will not retro-fit affiliate links into published guides without disclosing it.

3. Sponsored and paid placement

We accept enquiries about sponsorship and partnerships through our Advertise page. Our conditions are fixed:

• Any sponsored or paid content is labelled as such at the top of the page, in plain English, before you read it.
• Paid placement never appears inside a ranked guide or a "best of" list. A venue cannot buy its way into a recommendation, a position, or a rating.
• Sponsors do not see, review, or approve our editorial coverage of them or of their competitors.
• Outbound links in sponsored content carry the appropriate rel attributes so search engines can tell them apart from editorial links.

4. Free meals, invitations and press visits

Our writers are based in Osaka and pay for their own meals in the ordinary course of researching a guide. If a venue provides a meal, an invitation or an experience free of charge, that fact is disclosed in the article covering it, and accepting one carries no obligation to write about the venue or to write about it favourably.

5. Who operates MICHI

MICHI is operated by Stay Buddy Inc., a hospitality management company headquartered in Osaka. Stay Buddy manages accommodation in the city, so where a guide touches on a property or service connected to Stay Buddy, we say so in the guide itself.

How we research, verify and update our guides is set out in our Editorial Policy.

6. Questions or corrections

If something on MICHI looks like undisclosed advertising, tell us and we will fix or clarify it. Email [email protected].