Terms of Service

Last updated: 22 August 2026

These terms govern your use of Yorozu, a travel assistance service operated by SpiderWave Inc. (株式会社SpiderWave) from Tokyo, Japan. By messaging us, you agree to them. We have written them in plain English on purpose — if anything here is unclear, ask us before you use the service.

1. What Yorozu is

Yorozu is a small bilingual team that helps foreign visitors in Japan. We do two distinct things:

• We answer questions, free of charge. Directions, recommendations, translations, opening hours, etiquette and similar. There is no limit and no fee.
• We carry out tasks in Japanese, for a fee. Telephoning restaurants and businesses on your behalf, interpreting, chasing lost property, and finding and booking medical clinics.

We act as your agent. When we telephone a restaurant, we are making a reservation in your name, on your instruction. The contract for the meal is between you and the restaurant. Yorozu is not the restaurant, does not employ its staff, and does not control its prices, its policies or its service.

2. What Yorozu is not

• We are not a travel agency. We do not arrange flights, trains or accommodation for a fee. We can telephone your hotel or airline on your behalf to change, confirm or explain something, but we do not book or sell travel or lodging.
• We are not medical professionals. We can help you find and book a clinic and interpret for you, but we do not give medical advice, do not diagnose, and do not decide which treatment you need. Any information we relay about which department or clinic may suit you is general information, not a clinical judgement.
• We are not an emergency service. In an emergency, dial 119 for an ambulance or fire, or 110 for police. These calls are free and available 24 hours. Do not wait for Yorozu to reply.
• We are not available 24 hours. Our stated operating hours are on our site. Messages outside those hours are answered the following morning, Japan time.

3. Fees and how you approve them

Asking questions is free. For any task that carries a fee, we will tell you the exact amount in the chat and wait for your explicit agreement before doing any work. We never charge you for something you have not agreed to.

All fees are in Japanese yen and include consumption tax. We will tell you which tier applies to your request, and how long we will spend on it, before you agree.

4. If we fail, you do not pay

If we cannot secure your booking, cannot recover your item, or cannot complete the task you asked for, the fee is released in full, automatically. You do not need to request it, chase us, or fill in a form. Where we have taken a card authorisation for the fee, we simply release it and no money is ever taken.

Where we partially succeed — for example, we secure a booking at your second choice rather than your first — we will tell you before confirming, and you can decline at no cost.

5. Card holds and cancellation fees

We do not set cancellation fees. The amount, and the notice period it applies from, are set by the restaurant. We tell you exactly what the restaurant's policy is before you agree to the booking, and the hold matches that amount. A hold only becomes a real charge if you do not attend, or cancel inside the restaurant's stated notice period, and the restaurant applies its fee. In that case we pass the money to the restaurant.

Where a restaurant has no stated policy, we apply the following defaults, which are consistent with guidance published by Japanese government working groups on restaurant no-shows and with Japanese court precedent on reasonable damages:

If you tell us you cannot attend, we will telephone the restaurant on your behalf to cancel, at no charge to you. Telling us early costs you less than silence.

Under Japan's Consumer Contract Act, any cancellation charge is only enforceable up to the average loss actually suffered. If you believe a charge exceeds that, contact us and we will explain how it was calculated and correct it if we are wrong.

6. Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card details. You pay after agreeing to a specific task, never as a deposit against future work. Refunds are issued to the original card.

We will never ask you to transfer money to a personal bank account. If anyone claiming to be Yorozu asks you to do this, it is not us — please tell us immediately.

7. Your responsibilities

• Give us accurate information — correct dates, correct number of people, correct allergies. We pass on what you tell us, and a restaurant cannot accommodate a requirement it was not told about.
• Turn up to bookings you have asked us to make, or tell us as soon as you know you cannot. A no-show damages the restaurant and our relationship with it.
• Tell us promptly if your plans change.
• Do not ask us to do anything unlawful, or to misrepresent who you are to a third party.

8. When we will say no

We will decline requests we cannot do well. In particular, we cannot obtain reservations at introduction-only or members-only restaurants, which admit only guests brought by an existing regular. We will tell you this immediately rather than take your money and fail. We also reserve the right to decline any request, and to stop serving a customer who has failed to attend a booking without notice.

9. Limits of our liability

We take reasonable care in everything we do for you. However:

• We are not responsible for the quality of a restaurant's food or service, or for a venue changing or cancelling your booking.
• We are not responsible for medical outcomes, or for the treatment decisions of any clinic or hospital.
• We cannot guarantee that a lost item will be found, only that we will make a genuine effort to trace it.
• Our total liability for any task is limited to the fee you paid for that task, except where Japanese law does not permit such a limit.

Nothing in these terms excludes our liability for our own negligence where Japanese law prohibits that exclusion.

10. Interpreting

Our interpreters are competent bilingual speakers. Where a matter is medical, legal or otherwise consequential, we will say so and recommend a certified professional interpreter. Interpreting is not a licensed profession in Japan, and we do not hold ourselves out as certified medical or legal interpreters.

11. Your data

See our Privacy Policy. In short: we keep your chat only as long as your trip needs it, we delete it on request, we never sell your data, and we pass on to a restaurant only the name and party size needed to make your booking.

12. Changes and governing law

We may update these terms. The version in force is the one published here when you make your request, and material changes will be flagged in the chat. These terms are governed by Japanese law, and the courts of Japan have jurisdiction, except where consumer protection law in your country of residence gives you rights that cannot be excluded.

13. Contact

Message us on WhatsApp or LINE from our homepage, or email hello@askyorozu.com. Our hours are 9:00–18:00 Japan time. Business details are published in our Specified Commercial Transactions Act disclosure.