Terms of Use

• City-Cost, a website for sharing lifestyle information, is an on-line community service operated by Kyodo News Digital Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the “Company”). These City-Cost Terms of Use (hereinafter referred to as the “Terms”) shall apply to any relationship between the Company and all people using City-Cost (hereinafter referred to as “Users”).
• Users shall consent to these Terms before using the Service.
• The Company may revise the content of these Terms by notifying Users of the revision by displaying it on the Service. The revision will take effect at the time of display. If the Company determines that the revision of these Terms will have a significant impact on Users, Users will be informed of the revision within a reasonable period of notice. Users who make use of the Service after any revision to these Terms has taken effect will be deemed to have agreed to the revision of the Terms.

For the purpose of these Terms, the following terms shall be defined as stated below.

• The “Service” shall refer to “City-Cost” with the domain of “city-cost.com” and all portions of city-cost.com.
• “Posting” shall refer to uploading any piece of information, such as text, image, audio or video, which is posted via the posting form on the Service.
• “Users” shall refer to all the people using the Service.
• “Members” shall refer to people who have registered with the Service as a member.
• “Member Information” shall refer to all the information registered by Members with the Service, such as e-mail address, username and profile.
• “Content” shall refer to all the pieces of information posted on the website, such as questions and answers concerning daily life, and posts written by Members.

• The Service shall provide an opportunity to share Content posted by Members, and to exchange information beneficial for life in Japan.
• The Service shall improve the quality of information by enabling Users to edit, comment on, rate or tag the posted Contents.

• As the Service forms affiliations with various other services, content posted on the Service may be revealed on other services, news sites, and other media, including TV, magazines, radio and movies.
• Members making a post on the Service shall be deemed to consent to distribution of their post on a variety of media.

Users of the Service who intend to use any service requiring registration must meet the conditions stated below:

• In order to register with the Service, Users shall use an Internet connection to transmit their Member Information in a format designated by the Company, from the Member Information Registration Page offered by the Service.
• The Company shall be deemed to accept Users as Members when their Member Information is transmitted to the Company without problem.
• Members shall be required to register true and correct information as their Member Information. Any account acquired on the basis of information which the Company determines to be false or incorrect may be deleted at the discretion of the Company without consent 4. the relevant Member.
• In connection with information registered by Members, Members shall be responsible for any result of publication of data transmitted under the Member Information. (Members shall refrain from needlessly posting their personal information.)
• Members shall be responsible for use and management of their own information.
• Members shall be responsible for any act performed under their Member Information and the result thereof, regardless of whether or not the act is performed by the Member themself.

The Company shall control personal information contained in Member Information in accordance with the “Privacy Policy” established by the Company.

The Company may suspend delivery of e-mail to, or the membership of, a Member who is found by the Service:

• to post inappropriate information; or
• to use a password in an improper manner; or
• to register false Member Information; or
• to perform an act in violation of these Terms; or
• to have any other cause sufficient for the Company to determine that their membership is detrimental to the Company.

• Members shall assume responsibility for managing their password, which is used to log on to the Service.
• The Company shall not take any responsibility for unauthorized use of a password due to any leak of the password to a third party outside the Service or for similar reasons.
• Members shall not transfer to a third party, or allow a third party to use, their e-mail address or the password used by them for registration as a member.
• Members shall assume full responsibility for any damage caused to the Company or the Service as a result of their breach of the provisions of this Article.

• In order to withdraw from the Service, Member are requested to send an email to this effect, from the following page.
• Upon withdrawal from the Service, Members shall lose all their membership rights on the Service, including any rights regarding the content of their posts.
• Upon withdrawal from the Service, Members understand that any content they created and uploaded onto the service which resulted in the acquisition of points or other rewards will be managed by the Company under a different author name after the Company has undertaken appropriate checks and editions in order to protect the former Member's personal information.

• The Company shall assume no responsibility for any acts performed based on information obtained by Users from the Service (including information shown on the Service, external information such as from books introduced on the Service, or information in linked websites) or the results thereof.
• The Company shall not be obliged to manage or delete any information posted on the Service.
• The Company shall not make any warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of information supplied by the Service.
• Users shall, under their own responsibility, use the Service. Users shall, at their own responsibility and expense, deal with any dispute or demand for compensation for damage in connection with their action through the Service.
• With regard to data stored by the Company, the Company shall not make any warranty as to what is stored. In addition, the Company shall not be held responsible for loss of data stored in the Service or for any dispute or demand for compensation for damages resulting from any downtime of the server.

The Company may halt provision of the Service without giving prior notice to Users for the reasons stated below. The Company shall not assume responsibility for any disadvantage or damages suffered by Users due to interruption of the Service.

• Maintenance, inspection or repair of the system for the Service.
• Maintenance and inspection of facilities required for administration of the Service.
• Defect in any system apparatus due to fire or to power failure.
• Inability to provide the Service due to natural disaster, war, disturbance or labor dispute.
• When the Company determines that provision of the Service needs to be halted for administrative and technical reasons.

• Copyright of information posted by a User on the Service shall in principle belong to the posting User.
• With regard to information posted by Users through the Service, Users shall be deemed to grant the Company rights to copy, use, compile, modify, reproduce, reprint, transmit to the public, perform on stage, exhibit, offer, sell, transfer, rent, translate and adapt the information and the rights of the original author in the exploitation of a derivative work (that is, the rights stipulated in Article 21 and Article 28 of the Copyright Act, including the right of commercial use) exclusively, without charge.
• With regard to the rights granted by a User, the Company may grant other Users the right of the original author as mentioned in the preceding paragraph only within the scope of the Service, and the User shall consent to such a grant.
• A User shall allow the Service and other Users to edit the content of posts they have made, to distribute such posts to metadata, to make public the posts on the website of the Company and to make public the posts on websites affiliated with the Company.
• The Company may freely examine, decide to make public or not, edit and delete the content of posts on the Service.

In using the Service, Users shall be prohibited from performing:

• any act in violation of these Terms; or
• any act which leads to, or implies that it leads to, any criminal act; or
• any act promoting or furthering any criminal act; or
• any act of disclosing another User’s or a third party’s personally identifiable information; or
• any act which will go against another User’s or a third party’s benefit; or
• any act of posting Content which the Company regards as obscene, including child pornography or child abuse;
• any act of claiming to be someone else when using the Service; or
• any act in violation of laws or regulations; or
• any act of attacking the infrastructure for the Service through an unjust act; or
• any act of intentionally overloading the system of the Service; or
• any act of intentionally creating multiple account; or
• any act of producing financial gain through actions other than those approved by the Company; or
• any act of soliciting participation in a group, service or activity not related to the Service; or
• any act of infringing on a third party’s intellectual property rights (except for cases where such infringement is permitted by these Terms); or
• any act of abusing and/or defaming another User or a third party; or
• any act of a single User having multiple membership accounts for unjust purposes; or
• any act of advertising, promoting or inviting a third party without obtaining permission from the Company; or
• any act of impeding administration of the Service; or
• any act which infringes on, or potentially infringes on, intellectual property rights (including copyright and trademarks) of the Company, another User or a third party; or
• any other act deemed to be inappropriate by the Company.

• Users shall contact the Company using a form designated by the Company or via e-mail. The Company may refuse to receive any notification given to a contact not designated in the Service.
• The Company shall contact Users by posting on the Service or by sending e-mail to Users. The Company shall not assume any responsibility for any disadvantage Users may suffer due to their failure to submit correct contact information.

These Terms shall be governed by the laws of Japan and interpreted in accordance with the same. Any dispute relating to the Service, between the Company and any User, will fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Tokyo District Court.

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Terms of Use of Linkage Function for Logging into SNS

city-cost.com (hereinafter referred to as the “Service”) uses a linkage function (hereinafter referred to as the “Linkage Function”) with services operated by Facebook, Inc., Twitter, Inc. and others (hereinafter referred to as “External Services”) for login authentication.

• Use of the Linkage Function shall be governed by the following terms of use (hereinafter referred to as the “Terms”).
  A user of the Linkage Function (hereinafter referred to as a “User”) shall consent to these Terms before commencing use of the Linkage Function.
• The term “Non-Registrant” shall refer to a visiting user who has not registered with the Service as a User.
• Use of individual services offered by the Service shall be governed also by the applicable terms of use separately established for the said services (hereinafter referred to as “Terms of Service Use”). Matters not stipulated herein or any Terms of Service Use shall be governed by the “Terms of Use of this Website” as established by Kyodo News Digital.

• In cases where any User requests linkage with an External Service, the Company shall obtain any information about the User that is registered with the operating company of the External Service.
• The User shall be deemed to agree that the information obtained by the Company may be published as profile information, etc. on the Service.
• The User agrees that contents of entries made by a User and acts performed by a User may be posted on External Services, etc. by the Company or Non-Registrants, and that the Company or Non-Registrants may submit a post to External Services in place of the User by adding the URL of that Service.
• In cases where a User is requested to permit the Company to gain access to data when the User tries to log in to an External Service with the use of any services offered by the Company, the User shall confirm such request and grant such permission in order to use the Linkage Function.
• The Company shall, upon request from a User, delete any information about the User that was obtained from the operators of External Services.

• Users shall, in registering and using an account of an External Service, and otherwise using any External Service in any way (including submission of a post in regards to the content of entries written by the Users, and acts performed by the Users to External Services), comply with the provisions of terms established by the relevant External Service.
• Users shall register and manage their account with an External Service under their own responsibility, and shall be responsible for any damages resulting from their inadequate management, erroneous use, and/or unauthorised use by a third party. The Company shall not assume any responsibility for the Users’ accounts with any External Services.
• Users shall use an External Service under their own responsibility. The Company shall not assume any responsibility for any damage caused by such use, any dispute between the Users and an operator of the External Service, or any other matters concerning the External Service.

The Company may revise these Terms without any prior notice to Users. Any modified Terms shall supersede previous versions of the Terms, and shall come into effect when they are published on the Service.