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Before using SenseiStar.com (hereafter referred to as “this website”), please read the following terms and conditions.
“Learner” (学習者) means a user who can access the messaging and other features with the intention of hiring a teacher for lessons or asking them a question on their subject.
Note: “teacher” (先生), referred to on this website as “sensei”, means a user of this website who signs up and creates a Sensei profile with the intention of building a reputation as a teacher and connecting with private students.
1. Service outline
This website connects teachers with people who are looking for a teacher.
This website does not provide recruitment, dispatch or any other human resources-related service. This website provides a platform for teachers to create a profile and post content, a system where said profiles can be search and viewed, and a messaging feature which can be initiated by Learners.
Learners are required to make contact with Senseis directly using the messaging feature on the website, and this website has absolutely no role concerning lessons carried out between the Learners and Senseis.
Senseis are able to receive points known as “Sensei Stars” from Learners for posting interesting content or answering Quick Questions on their subject.
NB: Sensei accounts only have the ability to reply to messages they have received, i.e, they are not able to begin conversations with Learners.
2. Learner Requirements
This website may only be used by people or organizations seeking a teacher of a certain subject. Minors may not use this service. If a minor is to undertake a lesson with a Sensei, an adult over the age of 20 must make the application on his or her behalf, and must accompany and be responsible for the minor during the lessons.
This website will provide assistance only in the case that the website is not functioning correctly (for example, messaging feature not working, unable to award Sensei Stars etc.). Users of this site must have basic IT Skills. This website does not offer technical support on how to navigate its pages or features.
In the case of learners are contacting teachers who are not native Japanese speakers, it may be necessary to communicate in English or another language depending on the learners’ requirements.
3. Registration
This website requires Learners and Teachers to sign up with a username, password and to provide an email address in order to register.
4. Teachers Registered on This Website
This website is for teachers who wish conduct lessons on a freelance basis. This website’s staff conduct no interviews or employment checks, and makes no contracts with the teachers registered on this website. Each profile page on this website is created solely by a registered teacher. The information given on each profile is purely that which the teacher has decided to display. This website’s staff will edit or remove unsuitable content from time to time, however, this website does not guarantee the accuracy or credibility of the information given by teachers and cannot be held responsible for inaccuracies written by teachers.
5. Contact with teachers
Contact with teachers is done via the Sensei Star instant messaging platform. On subscribing to this website as a Learner, press the “Message” button on the teacher’s profile or within the small profile “Sensei Search” page. Exchanges of personal contact information (ie. email addresses, phone numbers and other social networking services), may be done at the discretion of the parties involved and at users’ risk.
6. Quick questions
Learners may ask a Sensei a quick question on their subject in exchange for a Sensei Star only when “Happy to answer a quick question on my subject in exchange for a Sensei Star” appears on the teacher profile. In such a case, please be sure to click the “give a Sensei Star” button on their profile once you have received a satisfactory answer. Only one Sensei Star per Sensei may be awarded. Learners may only ask Quick Questions to teachers who have not already answered one from them. A Quick Question should be answerable by the teacher in 2 minutes and must not fall outside the Quick Question Guidelines.
7. Payment of Lesson Fees
As stated above, this website does not have any employment connection with the teachers registered on the site. Therefore, Learners are required to make payment to teachers directly. Please be sure to confirm the details of lesson fees and transport fees before conducting the first lesson with the teacher. Timings and schedules of each payments are at the discretion of the learner and teacher
8. Support
This website offers support by live chat and email only in the following circumstances
The website is not functioning correctly
A teacher has not responded to a lesson request within three days
Please click on the owl on the bottom right of the screen to bring up the support dialogue. In the event that a live chat operator is not available, an email address is required so that staff can reply.
In this case, please be sure to use the email address with which you signed up to this website. This website’s staff may not reply in the case that the email address does not match the customer name.
If a teacher does not respond to a lesson request within three days, please let us know by pasting the URL of the teacher profile in contact box. As above, please press the owl button in the bottom right of the screen to bring up the support window. Staff will contact the teacher, however, as stated before, we cannot guarantee that they will respond. Teachers who continually ignore messages will have their profiles unpublished. Support chat and emails are provided in Japanese and English only.
9. Personal Information
This website will not disclose personal information of users to any third parties for the purpose of any commercial activity. This website will cooperate in accordance with lawful demands from authorities authorized to make such demands under Japanese law.
When subscribing to this website, learners are required to provide a unique username, email address and password. Users may change this information on logging into their account. Users who have lost their password are able to reset it here.
10. Prohibited actions
This website may not be used for purposes other than teachers, sending messages to teachers and viewing teachers’ posted content in the spirit of learning a skill which is taught by the teachers.
Users may not use offensive language, threaten or send any other inappropriate content
Users who use this website to send inappropriate messages may be banned without warning.
11. Rights Held by This Website
In the event of problems arising with teachers, this website may use its discretion to remove teachers profiles, but users may not instruct this website with regards to how to resolve problems or whether or not to delete certain profiles.
On breaching any part of the terms and conditions, users lose the right to use this service. In addition, in the event of communications from teachers that information provided by learners may be inaccurate, this website reserves the right to refuse its services to learners without notice.
This website reserves the right to suspend or terminate its service to all users without notice.
12. Disclaimer
Learners taking lessons contact and/ or meet the teachers found on this website at their own risk. This website takes no responsibility and cannot be held accountable for problems which arise from unlawful access by third parties, nor any consequences arising from not being able to access this website. This website cannot guarantee that Quick Questions will be answered. This website cannot guarantee the accuracy of the answers to Quick Questions or be held responsible for consequences arising from the answers given to Quick Questions. Furthermore, this website takes no responsibility and cannot be held accountable for any actions carried out by teachers or learners registered on this website.
SenseiStar is run by a small team in Tokyo called DigitalWaves. Our information can be found here: http://digitalwaves.io/
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
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When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
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Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.