やくそく。

Who we are

Shiro is run by Jakub Retek, based in the Czech Republic, in the European Union. For anything in this policy ・ a question, or to use one of your rights below ・ write to support@learnshiro.com. We are the data controller for the information described here.

Your learning data stays on your device by default

Progress, streaks, mistakes, reviews and settings are stored locally on this device. You can use every part of Shiro without an account, and if you never make one, it stays on your device ・ with three exceptions you start yourself, each described here: moving to the Home Screen app, sending a report, and web reminders. Delete the app and that data is gone with it.

ホーム画面へ移す ・ moving your progress to the Home Screen app uploads your whole backup (your progress, your name and what Shiro remembers) to our server (Cloudflare) under an eight-character code. It is held for at most ten minutes and deleted the moment the other app confirms, or at expiry. It is never read for anything else.

報告 ・ a report you send from the app is kept on our server for 90 days: your words, the kind of report, the reply address if you gave one, the build you were on, the screen you came from and the item you were looking at. Nothing else is attached and it goes to no third party.

The launch list

If you leave your email on our page to hear when Shiro opens (the list is for people aged 15 or older), we keep that address and the time you left it on our server (Cloudflare), and use it for one thing: to tell you when Shiro launches. First we send one email with a link to confirm the address is yours; an address that is not confirmed is deleted 7 days after that email (or 60 days after you left it, if that email could not be sent). Once you confirm, we send you the launch email and nothing else ・ no marketing, and the list is shared with no one except the service that delivers these emails (Resend). We keep it because you asked us to (in legal terms, your consent), and you can take that back at any time: write to support@learnshiro.com, or use the link on the page that confirms your place or in the launch email, and your address is deleted at once. The list is deleted 30 days after the launch email goes out, or by 31 December 2027 if Shiro has not launched by then.

If you make an account, we hold what it takes to sync

An account is optional and exists so your progress can follow you to another device. When you make one we store your email address, the name you give us, and a copy of your progress data on our servers (Cloudflare, in their global network). We do this to provide the account you asked for ・ in legal terms, to perform our contract with you.

We sign you in with a one-time code by email, through Resend, our email provider. There is no password. To stop abuse, our server counts sign-in requests per network address and per hashed email address, for an hour at a time. We do not sell your data, and we do not send marketing unless you ask us to.

You can delete your account and everything attached to it from 私 (Me) at any time. Deletion is immediate and permanent. One thing is kept, for two years: a keyed one-way hash of your email address, with the day your free trial ended and whether you had the refund, so that the free trial and the refund are given once per address. It holds nothing else. The AI server’s counts for the current plan year or trial, filed under a keyed one-way code of the address (see AI use), are also kept to the end of their calendar year, for the same reason. We keep it on the basis of our legitimate interest in preventing abuse; you can object by writing to us. If you joined through a friend’s invitation, their record that a friend joined stays, under a random id with no name or email.

If you came through a creator’s link, or are a creator

Creators are people who make videos about learning with Shiro and are paid a share of what the learners they bring pay. When this app is opened on a creator’s link, the app remembers that link on this device (only the first one), and tells our server once, which adds one to a daily count for that link. To count each install once, the server keeps a one-way hash of this install’s random id together with the link for 30 days; it keeps no network address and nothing else.

If you then make your account on this device within 90 days, we record which creator and which of their videos the link was for, so that the creator can be paid 35% of what you pay us. This is our legitimate interest in paying the people who bring us learners, and you can object by writing to us. The creator never sees your name, email or anything about you: only counts and sums: how many link opens and accounts came through each of their videos, and the payments and earnings per video only where at least three learners paid on it (fewer than that are added together with other videos). If you delete your account, that record stays under a random id with no name or email, and a keyed one-way hash of your email address with the creator’s id is kept for two years, so that an account made again with that address stays with the same creator.

If you join as a creator, we keep the name you post under and your link code (both public, in your links), the channel address you give, how you want to be paid and the PayPal or Wise address if it is not your account email, the country you pay tax in, which version of the creator terms you accepted and when, and the commissions and payouts on your account. If you set up payouts through Stripe, Stripe holds your identity and bank details and we keep only the Stripe account id and whether it can receive payouts. We use this to run the programme and pay you (our contract with you). When we pay you through PayPal or Wise, they receive your payout address and the amount.

To stop anyone earning from their own payments, our server keeps a keyed one-way hash of each card fingerprint Stripe reports for an account (never the card itself, which Shiro never sees), and compares a creator’s with their learners’, and their learners’ with each other’s. It also compares a learner’s email address with the creator’s account and payout addresses. These hashes are deleted with the account, except for a learner who came through a creator’s link: theirs are kept for two years after deletion, so that one card cannot pay for a string of deleted accounts.

Commission and payout records are accounting records: we keep them for as long as accounting and tax law requires, also after an account is deleted, under a random id; a payout record also keeps the PayPal or Wise address the money was sent to. If a creator deletes their account, their link code is never given to anyone else, and a keyed one-way hash of their email address is kept with the balance they left, for as long as those records. When a creator changes their payout details, we email their account address to say so.

Shiro is an AI ・ and his voice and the artwork are AI-generated

Shiro is an artificial-intelligence tutor. When you chat with him, you are talking to a computer program, not a person. His spoken voice is generated by an AI voice service (ElevenLabs), and the illustrations throughout the app ・ the word and kanji stickers, the scenery ・ are AI-generated images. We tell you this plainly because you deserve to know what is real.

The camera Lens and talking with Shiro use an AI service

When you point the 写 Lens at something or talk with Shiro, that photo or message is sent to Anthropic (our AI provider, in the United States) to generate the answer. Anthropic does not use it to train its models and keeps it only briefly; Shiro keeps no copy off your device. In 話す Speak your microphone audio is streamed live to Google (Gemini) so the teacher can hear and answer you; the transcript of the talk stays on your device and only that transcript is sent to Anthropic for the written notes.

For the Lens: the camera’s live picture stays on your device. When you tap, we send one small still picture (at most 1024 pixels on its long side) and your course level, and nothing else. Our server passes the picture to Anthropic and keeps no copy of it. Shiro never says who a person in a picture is. When the picture shows a well-known thing (a product, a fictional character, a landmark) and nobody is in it, the lesson about that thing is written from its name alone, never from your picture, and kept on our server for up to 30 days to show other learners who point at the same thing. To keep the yearly Lens allowance, our server counts uses per account when you are signed in (by the account code described under AI use below) or otherwise per device (a random id made on this install, not your name), and per network address: a daily count, kept for a day, and a yearly count, kept for up to two years. During the free trial it also counts the trial’s Lens uses, kept as described under AI use.

When you talk with Shiro we also send what he needs to answer you as your tutor: your first name if you gave one, your level and JLPT target, the things Shiro remembers about you, and the points you have been getting wrong. You can see and delete everything Shiro remembers on his own screen. We never send anything you did not type, photograph, or tell him.

The Lens is for adults ・ please do not photograph children with it.

Speaking practice

When you record yourself in 声 Shadowing, the recording stays on your device so you can play it back against a native voice. To tell you whether you said the right words, the audio is transcribed・on most browsers this happens through the browser’s own speech service, and where that is unavailable it is sent to our transcription provider (ElevenLabs) and discarded immediately. No recording is ever stored by us.

Who else touches your data, and where it goes

A few trusted providers process data on our behalf so the app can work: Cloudflare (hosting and the account database), Resend (the login and account emails), Anthropic (the AI answers and the written notes after a spoken lesson), Google (the live voice conversation in 話す Speak ・ your speech is streamed to Google’s Gemini service in real time to hear and answer you, and is not kept by us), ElevenLabs (Shiro’s recorded voice and speech transcription), and Stripe (payments). Each is bound by a data-processing agreement.

見る Episodes: when you search for an anime or manga, the app first looks in a list of popular titles it carries on your device. Only when that list has no good match does our server send the title you typed to Wikidata, a free public database run by the Wikimedia Foundation, and keep the answer in its cache for up to a day. Wikidata receives the search text and our server’s address, never yours, and nothing else about you. If nothing matches and you type a show in yourself, its name and your episode number go to Anthropic so Shiro can open the talk; that opening card is written for you alone and is not stored or shared by us. When you talk an episode over with Shiro, what you type and the recent lines of that talk go to Anthropic to write his reply, and are not kept by us; the talk itself is kept on your device. The episode cards Shiro opens a listed show with are written once per episode and level and shared with every learner who picks the same one: they hold only the catalogue’s titles and Shiro’s text, nothing about you. Our server counts how many turns your device has used (by its random id, with no text; a show you typed in is counted with no trace of its name), so the daily and yearly allowances hold. The older episode debrief this replaced looked titles up from your browser at AniList and Jikan (an open interface to MyAnimeList); it is being retired.

AI use: so that the AI stays within what a subscription pays for, our server keeps a few counts. When you are signed in, the app first gets a short-lived pass from our account server (valid for one hour, kept only in the app’s memory) and sends it with each AI request. The pass says whether your account is on its free trial, subscribed or a beta tester, when the trial or the plan year ends, and carries a code for your account. That code is a keyed one-way code made from your email address: it is not your email, your name or your account number, and the AI server cannot turn it back into them. It is made from the address so that the free trial’s AI is given once per address, like the trial itself. The AI server counts by that code, or, when you are not signed in, by your device’s random id: how much this month’s AI calls cost, how much the plan year’s (or the free trial’s) AI calls cost, the live-talk minutes used this month and today, and during the free trial how many Lens uses and live-talk minutes the trial has used. It also notes on how many days the account or device used AI. Nothing you typed, said or photographed is kept with any of it. The month’s and the day’s counts are deleted when the month or the day ends; the plan-year and trial counts at the end of the calendar year in which that plan year or trial ends, also when you delete your account before then (they hold only the code and the counts); the count of days 30 days after the last AI use. Your network address is counted only for the day, like every daily count.

Some of these are in the United States, so some data leaves the EU. Those transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses. You can ask us for the details.

No ads, no trackers, no analytics SDKs

Shiro contains no advertising, no third-party trackers, and no analytics SDKs. When you have an account we record which screens are used, tagged with a random id made on this install and your account ・ pseudonymous, not anonymous. It carries no name and no email. For practice screens it includes whether each answer was right and how long it took, so we can see which drills are too hard. These events are kept for 90 days and deleted with your account. Without an account nothing is sent, and nothing from before you made one.

The 根付箱 charm box shows what share of travellers own each charm. Once you have opened the box, the app sends our server (Cloudflare) the list of charms you hold, at most once a day, and nothing else: no device id, no name, no other learning data. The server adds it to counts per charm and a count of travellers active in the last 30 days, and keeps nothing else: no list of anyone’s charms, and not your network address (it is used only in the moment, to slow a flood of reports, and never written down). So that tomorrow’s report replaces today’s instead of counting you twice, the server hands back a single-use receipt that stays on your device; the server keeps only the fact that a receipt was used, as a random code, for up to 30 days. The shares shown are refreshed once a day, so no single report can be picked out of them, and below 200 travellers no share is shown at all.

Reminders in the installed app are local notifications: the hour stays on your device. Reminders in the browser use web push: to send one, our server (Cloudflare) keeps this browser’s push address and keys, your chosen time and time zone, when the next one is due, the last day one was sent and counters of sends and failures. The message itself is sealed so only your browser can read it. Turn reminders off in Me and that record is deleted.

Payments

Subscriptions are handled by our payment provider, Stripe・your card details go straight to Stripe, and Shiro never sees or stores them.

When you subscribe, Stripe receives your email address and your account’s random id, so the payment belongs to your account. From Stripe we keep only what the app needs to open or lock: the Stripe customer and subscription ids, your plan and its status, when it renews or ends, whether you cancelled, and the date and amount of your first payment (for the refund rule). Stripe sends the receipts and invoices, a reminder before each yearly renewal, and notices about a failed payment or an expiring card.

If you delete your account, these records are deleted with it and we ask Stripe to delete you as a customer, which also ends any subscription. Stripe keeps the payment records that tax and anti-fraud law require it to keep.

How long we keep it

We keep your account data for as long as your account exists. Delete your account and it is gone immediately, apart from the trial hash described above (two years). A signed-in device stays signed in for 60 days after its last use, and never longer than a year without signing in again. Usage events for 90 days; a report for 90 days; the Lens’s use counts for a day and a year (up to two), an account’s or device’s AI use for the month until the month ends, for the plan year or the free trial until the end of the calendar year in which it ends, and the days it used AI until 30 days after its last use, and a shared Lens lesson about a thing for up to 30 days; a move-to-Home-Screen backup for at most ten minutes; the charm box’s owner counts and used receipts for 30 days; a browser’s reminder record until you turn reminders off; the launch list until 30 days after the launch email; a creator link’s once-per-install count hash for 30 days, and the hash that keeps a learner with their creator for two years after the account is deleted; creator commission and payout records as long as accounting law requires.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you the data we hold, correct it, delete it, or send you a copy to take elsewhere; you can object to a use or withdraw a consent at any time. Most of this you can do yourself from 私 (Me); for the rest, write to support@learnshiro.com and we will answer within a month.

If you think we have handled your data wrongly, you can complain to the Czech data-protection authority, the Úřad pro ochranu osobních údajů (uoou.gov.cz).

Children

You need to be at least 15 (the age set in the Czech Republic) to make an account on your own; younger than that, a parent or guardian needs to agree. We do not knowingly collect data from children under that age, and the camera Lens is for adults. If you believe a child has made an account, write to us and we will remove it.

What Shiro is

Shiro is a study tool for Japanese from your first kana to JLPT N1. We work hard to keep the content accurate, but no app can guarantee an exam result・the walking is yours. It is a study aid, not professional or exam advice, so please double-check anything that matters.

Not affiliated with the JLPT

JLPT® and “Japanese-Language Proficiency Test” are trademarks of the Japan Foundation and Japan Educational Exchanges and Services (JEES), used here only to describe what Shiro helps you study. Shiro is an independent study aid and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to them. The practice tests are original materials we wrote ・ they are not official JLPT examinations, and a score here is not an official JLPT result. Always confirm exam dates, sites and registration on the official jlpt.jp.

Shiro and the artwork are AI-generated

Shiro is an AI tutor, his voice is AI-generated (ElevenLabs), and the app’s illustrations are AI-generated images. AI can be confidently wrong ・ treat Shiro as a helpful study partner, not an authority, and verify anything important.

What’s ours, what’s yours

The app, its lessons, stories, artwork and audio are ours or licensed to us・please do not rip, resell or redistribute them. Your progress is yours.

Open data we build on

Dictionary and kanji data derive from JMdict, JMnedict and KANJIDIC2, property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; the dictionary data we derive from them is likewise available under CC BY-SA. Stroke-order data derives from KanjiVG by Ulrich Apel, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Pitch-accent data derives from UniDic (NINJAL), used under its BSD licence. Example sentences come from the Tatoeba Project (tatoeba.org), used under CC BY 2.0 FR. Our word-frequency ordering is likewise derived from the Tatoeba Project (CC BY 2.0 FR) and from 青空文庫 / Aozora Bunko public-domain texts, prepared via the globis-university/aozorabunko-clean dataset (CC BY 4.0). JLPT word lists are courtesy of Jonathan Waller (tanos.co.uk). The reading room holds works from 青空文庫 whose copyright has expired. Thank you all ・ apps like this stand on your decades of work.

Your subscription

After the free trial, Shiro is a paid subscription: one yearly plan, $149 a year, price shown before you pay, including any tax. It renews automatically each year until you cancel. You can cancel any time from 私 (Me) ・ it is as easy to cancel as it was to subscribe ・ and access runs to the end of the year you paid for.

If you subscribe with three or more days of your free trial left, those days are kept: the first charge comes on the day the trial would have ended, not before. No card is needed for the trial itself, and nothing is ever charged unless you subscribe.

Refunds: within 14 days of your first payment you can ask for a full refund from 私 (Me), with no reason needed; the subscription ends at once. This covers your EU right to withdraw. The refund from 私 (Me) is given once per email address; if you subscribe again on a new account, write to us within 14 days and your legal right to withdraw still applies. After those 14 days, and for renewals, payments are not refunded, but you can cancel so that the next renewal is never charged. If you were ever charged twice for the same period, write to us and the extra charge is refunded in full.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the Czech Republic, and nothing here takes away the consumer rights your own country’s law gives you.

Contact

Questions about any of this? Write to support@learnshiro.com ・ we read everything.

The creator programme

These terms apply if you join Shiro’s creator programme from 創作者 (Creators) in the app, on top of the terms of use above. This is version 2026-10-11. You must be at least 18 to join. You take part as an independent creator: not our employee, agent or partner, and you cannot make promises on our behalf.

What you earn

You earn 35% of every payment a learner who is yours makes to Shiro, for as long as they stay subscribed, renewals included. The 35% is of what the learner actually paid: sales tax or VAT included in the price is not counted, and any amount refunded or taken back through a chargeback is not counted. Amounts are in US dollars and each payment’s share is rounded down to the cent.

Who is yours

A learner is yours when the first creator link opened on their device before they made their Shiro account was yours, and the account was made within 90 days of opening it. That stays for the life of their account and does not change afterwards: not with a later link, not with another creator’s link, and not if they delete their account and make a new one with the same email address. You do not earn from your own payments, your own other accounts, accounts using your account or payout address, or accounts paid with your own card; those are not counted. When one card pays for two or more of your learners, those payments are held until we have checked them. Your links are public and you may share them wherever you are allowed to post.

When it is yours to keep

Each commission is pending for 14 days after the learner’s payment, the time in which a learner can ask for their money back. After that it is earned, and it is paid in the next weekly payout. If a payment is refunded or charged back after that, the commission on it is taken back from what we pay you next. You never have to pay us back directly: your balance goes down, and later commissions make it up.

Payouts

We pay every week, on Monday (UTC), when your earned balance is at least $20; a smaller balance waits for a later week. We pay to the PayPal or Wise address you give us, or, once we offer it, to a Stripe account you set up. Please keep that address correct: a payment sent to the address you gave counts as paid. After you change your payout details, payouts wait 7 days. You cannot delete your account while commission is pending, owed to you, or below zero after a refund; write to us and we settle it first. We may hold a payout while we look into unusual activity, such as many accounts paid with one card, and we tell you when we do.

How you post about Shiro

Say clearly that you earn from Shiro every time you post about it with your link: use your platform’s paid-partnership label, or put #ad at the start, in the video and in its text. Do not promise results nobody can guarantee, such as “fluent in 30 days” or a passed JLPT, and do not say that Shiro is official or endorsed by the JLPT or by us beyond this programme. Do not buy clicks or signups, spam, bid on the name Shiro in search ads, or make accounts for other people.

Post when you like and as often as you like. There are no quotas and no penalty for not posting.

Free access while you take part

While you are an approved creator, we may give you the whole app free (the gold ticket): when we decide to, or once three learners who are yours have kept their payments past the 14 days. AI features keep the same fair-use limits as everyone’s. It ends when you leave the programme or are paused.

Our artwork in your videos

You may use the artwork in the creator asset pack only in content about Shiro, as described on the asset pack screen: no redrawing it into new characters, no selling it or putting it on merchandise, no using it to train or prompt an AI model, and no presenting it as your own or as hand-drawn. The permission ends when you leave the programme; videos already published may stay up.

Taxes

You are responsible for declaring and paying any tax on what you earn, wherever you live. We record the country you tell us you pay tax in, and we may ask for a tax form before paying you.

Pausing, leaving and ending

You can leave at any time by writing to support@learnshiro.com; what you earned up to then is still paid, in one final payout whatever its size, once the last 14-day window has passed. Your link code is not given to anyone else afterwards. We can pause your link or end your part in the programme if you break these terms, for example undisclosed ads, misleading claims or fake signups, and commission that came from the breach is not paid. If we end the programme for everyone, we tell you at least 90 days ahead, and you keep earning from learners who are already yours for as long as they stay subscribed.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms with at least 30 days’ notice in the app. A change never lowers what you are owed for payments already made. If you do not accept new terms, you can leave and you are paid what you earned.