Terms of Service

TakumiPen is a service of MensuraMedia LLC. "The operator", "we" and "us" throughout this document and the Privacy Policy mean MensuraMedia LLC, which is the parent company of TakumiPen. The particulars of the operator are set out below so that a reader can identify, verify and contact the entity they are contracting with, each item on its own line rather than buried in a paragraph.

TakumiPen is currently offered as a beta service. It is under active development, it is not a finished product, and it does not behave like a mature production system. This section explains what that means in practice, because the difference is material and you are agreeing to it by using the service. Nothing in this section narrows any other term below; it adds to them.

A mature production system carries expectations that this service does not yet meet: that it will be available when you need it, that what worked yesterday works today, that your data persists unchanged, that defects are rare and found before you meet them, and that somebody is on hand when something goes wrong. Each of those is a commitment earned over time by a system in steady operation. This service has not been in steady operation long enough to have earned any of them, and you should not rely on it as though it had.

Availability is not guaranteed. The service may be unavailable, slow, or interrupted at any time, with or without notice, for maintenance, deployment, correction of a defect, or reasons we do not anticipate. There is no service level agreement, no uptime commitment, no scheduled maintenance window you can plan around, and no undertaking that an interruption will be brief. Do not arrange your affairs so that a filing deadline depends on this service being reachable on a particular day.

Features may change, move or be removed. Functionality present today may be altered, restricted or withdrawn without notice and without a replacement. The interface may change in ways that make earlier instructions, screenshots or your own notes inaccurate. Behaviour may differ from what the documentation, the About page or this site otherwise describes, because the description may lag the software or the software may lag the description.

Your data may be lost, reset or migrated. While the service takes the protection of stored material seriously and the Privacy Policy below sets out what is held and how, beta operation involves schema changes, migrations, corrections and occasionally the discarding of data that cannot be carried forward. Cases, accounts, uploaded files and produced documents may be lost, truncated, altered or reset, including without individual notice and including as a result of our own error. Keep your own copy of anything you would be unwilling to lose, and download produced documents rather than treating this service as their only home. This is the single most important sentence in this section.

Defects are expected, and checking the output is yours. Software in beta contains errors that testing has not yet found. This service prepares documents that you may submit to Japanese authorities, where an error can cost time, money, an application, or an opportunity that does not return. A produced document may contain a wrong value, a mis-transcribed name, a stale form revision, a mis-rendered character, a misplaced field or an omission, and it may do so while appearing entirely correct. You must read and verify every document this service produces, in full, against your own records and the official source, before you rely on it or submit it anywhere. Do not treat the output as checked merely because it was generated.

There is no support commitment. There is no guaranteed response time, no support channel with an obligation attached, and no undertaking that a problem you report will be fixed, fixed in any particular order, or fixed at all. Reports are welcome and are read; that is the whole of what is promised.

Terms of access may change when beta ends. The service may be free, discounted or subject to limits during beta that will not apply afterwards. Nothing about the present cost, quota or feature set implies what any of them will be later. Beta may end, be extended, be restarted, or the service may be discontinued entirely without becoming generally available. If the service is discontinued we will make a reasonable effort to give notice and a means of retrieving your data, but a beta service that is being withdrawn is precisely the circumstance in which such an effort may fall short, which is why the paragraph on keeping your own copy is written as strongly as it is.

Everything else in these Terms continues to apply. In particular, and without limitation: no immigration outcome is promised; this is not legal representation; the accuracy of what you submit remains your responsibility; and the limitation of liability below applies to beta operation in the same way it applies to any other use. Where a term below and this section could be read as inconsistent, read them together, with this section describing the condition the service is in rather than creating an exception to the obligation.

This service prepares documents. It does not grant, approve, guarantee or influence any immigration outcome. Every decision on a visa, a status of residence, permission to land or entry into Japan rests entirely with the Japanese authorities, which apply their own criteria, exercise their own discretion, and may refuse an application for reasons they need not explain in advance.

No fee charged by this service is ever contingent on an application succeeding, and no refund is ever offered on a refusal. A refund promised on refusal would amount to selling an outcome, which is precisely what cannot be sold.

Use of this service does not create a lawyer-client or scrivener-client relationship. It does not provide legal advice on an individual case, and it does not act as a filing agent. Filing on another person's behalf is a regulated role in Japan, held by an accredited 行政書士 (administrative scrivener) or lawyer who has notified the immigration bureau. Software is not an agent.

Where a registered professional reviews a case through this service, that engagement is separate from your use of the software, is entered into by you and them directly, and begins only because you chose to offer the case. We are not a party to it.

Information about procedures, fees and requirements is provided for general guidance, carries the date it was verified, and can change without notice. You are responsible for the accuracy of what you submit, and you should confirm anything material against the official source before relying on it. Every page here links to the source it used.

Where guidance here differs from what an official at the counter tells you, the official is authoritative.

User Content means everything you put into this service and everything produced from it: the answers you enter, the documents and images you upload, any note you write to a professional, the drafts rendered from your answers, and the record of the case itself. It is yours. You keep every right in it that you had before you entered it. This service claims no ownership of it, no licence to publish it, no right to sell it, and no right to use it to train anything. What you grant is the narrowest permission that makes the service work: to store it, to encrypt it, to render it onto the published forms, and to show it back to you — and, only if you choose to offer a case, to show it to the professional you offer it to. What you are charged for is never the content. Fees on this service are for usage and storage: how many records you keep, how much space they occupy, and for how long. They do not vary with what a document is about, which procedure it belongs to, or how difficult a case is. Two records of the same size cost the same whatever they contain. You may take it out and you may delete it. Export is available while your account is open. Deletion removes the answers and the produced documents when you ask, not on a schedule of ours.

They are registered users, not our people. Licensed professionals listed on this service are independent practitioners. They are not employed by us, contracted to us, partnered with us, or affiliated with us in any way. They hold their own qualifications, carry their own professional obligations, and offer their own services on terms they set themselves. We do not introduce, recommend or vouch. Listing is not a referral, a recommendation, an endorsement or an introduction. We do not select a professional for you and we do not represent that any of them is suitable for your matter. Verification of a registration confirms that a person checked the registration; it is not an opinion about anybody's work. Any engagement is yours, formed directly. It is entirely voluntary. Its scope, its terms, its fee, its performance and its result are matters between you and the professional. We are not a party to it, we do not supervise it, and we accept no responsibility for it. Nothing on this service is a promise, a guarantee, or a committed or dedicated offering of any professional's services. Two fee structures, which never meet. What you pay us is for usage and storage of this service, described in the published schedule. What you pay a professional is for their services, set by them. We take no share of any professional's fee, and no professional pays us for an engagement, a referral or an introduction. What a professional may pay us is for their own use of this service — a listing, a seat, unlocking a record they wish to read — and none of it is triggered by, or measured by, any client relationship they form. You are free to go elsewhere. You may contact any professional listed here, several of them, or none. You may instruct someone found outside this service, or prepare and file entirely by yourself. Nothing here obliges you to engage anybody.

Optional, off unless you turn it on, and revocable at any time. If you offer a case, registered professionals see it as a read-only draft together with whatever note you write. Nothing you have entered is visible to anyone else unless you offer it.

This is a directory professionals opt into. It is not a referral service and takes no share of anybody's fee. No case is routed or assigned to anyone; you choose, and they choose whether they are available.

A professional's reply is one of three: available to take this on, not taking this on, or more information needed before they can say. None of them is an approval, an endorsement or an opinion about your case, and no document produced here carries any professional's name or endorsement. Only the Immigration Services Agency approves anything.

If you engage someone, that engagement, its terms and its fee are between you and them, and we are not a party to it. What we hand a professional on engagement is your case as structured data, never a document for them to sign; they produce their own work product in their own office, under their own responsibility.

An account is required. A case cannot be created or worked on without one, and nothing is produced without one. The reference pages -- the guide, the timelines, the catalogue and the checklist -- ask for nothing and are open to anybody.

Keep your sign-in address current, since a lost address is the one thing that cannot be recovered for you. You may delete any case, or the whole account, at any time from the account page, and deletion is immediate rather than scheduled.

アカウントの作成は必須です。アカウントなしでは案件の作成も編集もできず、書類の作成も 行えません。手引き、日程、書類一覧、必要情報などの参照ページは、アカウントなしでどなたでも ご覧いただけます。

サインインに用いるメールアドレスは最新の状態に保ってください。アドレスを失った場合、 こちらで復旧することはできません。作成中の案件及びアカウントは、アカウントのページから いつでも削除でき、削除は予約ではなく即時に行われます。 アカウントの作成は任意であり、アカウントなしでも書類を作成できます。サインインに用いる メールアドレスは最新の状態に保ってください。アドレスを失った場合、こちらで復旧することは できません。作成中の案件及びアカウントは、アカウントのページからいつでも削除でき、削除は 予約ではなく即時に行われます。

違法な利用、他の利用者の案件へのアクセスの試み、又は他の利用者の利用を妨げる規模の自動的な アクセスがある場合、利用を停止することがあります。その場合も、ご自身のデータを書き出す 権利は失われません。

This service is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, liability is limited to the fees paid for it, and does not extend to an immigration outcome, which is not ours to affect. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Changes to these Terms are notified on this page and on the account page, with the date they take effect. The law under which this service operates is set out in the section that follows.

This section states, comprehensively and in plain terms, which body of law governs this service, which body of law does not, and what each of those means for you. It is placed at the end because it qualifies everything above it.

Where the operator is established. The operator is a limited liability company organised under the laws of the State of Florida, United States of America, with its principal place of business in the United States and with the servers on which this service runs, and on which any information you provide is stored and processed, located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States of America. The particulars are set out in "Who operates this service" above. The operator is established, resident, registered and regulated in the United States, and nowhere else.

The law the operator complies with. The operator conducts this service in compliance with the law applicable at the place where it resides and operates. That comprises the federal law of the United States of America; the law of the State of Florida as its state of organisation; and the law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where its servers are situated and where information is processed and held. This includes, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the law of those jurisdictions governing information security and the safeguarding of personal information, notification in the event of a security breach, consumer protection and the prohibition of unfair or deceptive acts and practices, advertising and the accuracy of representations made to customers, the formation and performance of contracts concluded by electronic means, the acceptance and processing of payments, the retention of business records, and taxation. Where those laws impose an obligation on the operator, the operator undertakes that obligation. Statements made by the operator in these Terms and in the Privacy Policy about how information is handled are binding on the operator as a matter of that law, and are made accordingly.

The law the operator does not undertake to comply with, and what that means. This service is offered from the United States. The operator maintains no office, branch, subsidiary, permanent establishment, representative, agent or assets in any other country; holds no registration, licence, authorisation, permit or accreditation from any governmental, regulatory or supervisory authority outside the United States; and is not supervised by, accountable to, or subject to the administrative jurisdiction of any such authority. Accordingly, and this is stated expressly rather than left to be inferred, the operator makes no representation, warranty or undertaking of any kind that this service, its content, its interface, the manner in which it collects, uses, stores, transfers, discloses, retains or erases information, the consents it seeks or the form in which it seeks them, the disclosures it publishes or the form and placement of those disclosures, its pricing, invoicing, billing, refund and cancellation arrangements, its record-keeping, or its arrangements for handling requests, enquiries, complaints or disputes, conform to, satisfy, or are intended to satisfy the requirements of the law of any country, state, province, territory or jurisdiction other than those identified in the preceding paragraph. Where the law of any other jurisdiction would impose a requirement differing from what is described in these Terms and in the Privacy Policy -- including any requirement as to local registration or the appointment of a local representative; the publication of prescribed particulars in a prescribed form; the obtaining, recording or renewal of consent in a prescribed manner; the granting of prescribed rights of access, portability, rectification, restriction, objection or erasure, or prescribed procedures or time limits for responding to them; prescribed periods for the retention or destruction of records; prescribed channels, forums or authorities for the resolution of disputes; prescribed notices, warnings, cooling-off periods or rights of withdrawal; or prescribed reporting to a supervisory authority -- that requirement is not undertaken by the operator and is not to be read into these Terms.

Your responsibility. This service is made available from the United States and is not directed at, targeted to, or offered into any particular jurisdiction outside it. If you access or use it from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative, as the person seeking out the service rather than as a person to whom it has been marketed, and you are responsible for determining whether your access to and use of it is permitted under the law that applies to you, and for complying with that law. If your access to or use of this service is not permitted where you are, you must not access or use it.

What this does not mean. Nothing in this section is a statement that information you provide is unprotected, or that the operator is indifferent to how it is handled. What the operator does is set out in the Privacy Policy and is undertaken as described there: answers are encrypted where they are stored, under a key held apart from them; nothing is provided or sold to any third party; nothing is used to train any system; a case can be exported by the person it belongs to, and deleted by them immediately and irreversibly; and a security breach is notified as and to whom the law applicable to the operator requires. Those undertakings are given under the law identified above, and it is under that law that they are enforceable.

Governing law and forum. These Terms, and any dispute, claim or matter arising out of or in connection with them or with your use of this service, whether contractual or non-contractual, are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Florida, United States of America, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts sitting in the State of Florida have jurisdiction over any such dispute, claim or matter, and you and the operator submit to that jurisdiction. Where you are a consumer and the mandatory law of your country of habitual residence confers on you a protection that an agreement as to governing law or forum cannot lawfully remove, this section does not purport to remove it, and nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.