Girls just wanna have fun

When it comes to dating in Japan, perhaps the old cliché is right. What's good for the goose really is good for the gander.

A trio of oh-so cute Japanese girls huddle around two foreign males in the corner of a room. A soulful soundtrack in Savannah Lounge gradually takes a backseat to conversation. The room is swelling with people. A white male in his mid-twenties is chatting with a young Japanese girl in another corner.

As usual, a majority of the people at tonight's party are Japanese females… and the men who love them. And that's great, if you carry the Y chromosome. But any foreign femmes hoping to find that special someone tonight have their work cut out for them. Japan can seem like a man's world when it comes to the dating scene. Foreign guys often resuscitate their love lives here, playing the field, occasionally meeting their “soul mate” and exchanging vows. But their foreign counterparts don't always have the same fortune.

Many gaijin guys are gunning for j-girls and it often seems that Japanese guys are not interested in exchanging anything but language with an estrogen friendly ex-pat. So how does a foreign woman meet men in Japan?

If you're as lucky as Pamela Bingcang was, you won't have to leave your home. The 26 year-old New York native has been living in Japan for two years and dating a Japanese man she met online for the past 15 months.

Bingcang says she wasn't initially interested in dating a Japanese man, but she did find the dating scene in Osaka frustrating before she tried her luck online.

“If I was out with my English-speaking girlfriends it was always us that had to accost them.”

TJ Maclean*, a 24 year-old Australian English teacher in Nagoya, also had to make the first move with her Japanese boyfriend of five months. Maclean met her beau at the school where she taught. “Every time I saw him he was really sweet but shy. There was a definite che-mistry between us. After spending a while trying to convince myself that its OK to make the first move, and some deep breaths to settle the butterflies, I asked him to a party that I was having at my apartment. His eyes lit up. He emailed me almost instantly telling me he was excited about the party and thanked me for inviting him.”

Maclean says that one of the biggest dating obstacles for foreign women is overcoming the shyness of Japanese males. “You have to be patient as they do open up, and when they do they have this completely different personality that you get to explore. My past relationships with western guys have been a little rushed and I can't remember most of my first kisses. Every-thing happens so quickly.”

Twenty-nine year-old Lucy Hime*, from Brisbane, Australia also agrees that Japanese men are worth pursuing. “The language barrier is definitely one of the biggest obstacles. The wonderful thing about this however is that there aren't any language mind games played with each other, the usual that goes along with dating a western guy. We think of what we really need to say and then say it. It's lovely.” Hime, an English teacher in Osaka, met her boyfriend at a karaoke shot bar about a year ago and she had to make the first move.

“I asked him out on a date and he thought that I was joking, or that I just wanted to give him an English lesson.”

Hime's advice to fellow females is simple. “Japanese guys are really shy. If you can speak a bit of Japanese to break the ice it would pro-bably be in your favour. You need to jump up and down in front of them before they get the hint, don't bother to wait for them to ask you out. Do all the work yourself.”

But Maria Mills*, a 28 year-old office worker from Amagasaki has had a different dating experience in Japan. The Florida native says that in the seven years she has been in Japan, many of the men she has dated have approached her. “I don't think that I've changed my dating style at all. Most of the guys I've met have asked me out.” Mills' current boy-friend of 6 years was no exception. “He saw me teaching at a conversation café and he was interested in meeting a black woman, so he came up to me at a party that the café was throwing. We started chatting and really hit it off.”

Mills says that one of the most difficult dating aspects here for western females is learning to accept the way that many Japanese men woo their women. “As a whole, they aren't really that romantic. You can cook them a huge dinner and they might say, 'that smells nice.' They may take a long time to tell you how they feel about you and many of us aren't used to that.”
Sean Foley, event organizer for Osaka and Nagoya Friends, agrees.

“Foreign women are used to verbal affection back home and here many Japanese men co-mmunicate with their body language, or just a look.”

But Foley says that a lot of Japanese men are interested in dating foreigners. “Many of the men come up to me at parties and ask me 'where are all the foreign women?'”

So what's the verdict?

Do foreign women have a chance with Japanese men?
Twenty-three year-old Takanori Shimada seems to think so. The Osaka-based acupun-cturist has been dating an English teacher from New Zealand for nearly a year. “We met at my friends party. I'm maybe a strange Japan- ese guy, but I like dating foreign girls. They are very natural, independent and they have a big heart.” Shimada also echoes the opinion that foreign girls hoping to get a date here may have to make the first move. “Japanese men are usually very shy. It's just the way it is. It's a cultural difference. It's just hard for foreign women here sometimes.”

So maybe there is a bottom line for gaijin gals who want to date in Japan. It may be time to risk some rejection and take the plunge that western men have for ages. Stop waiting for that guy to ask you out and ask him out yourself.

*not their real name.

Text: Antoinette Sarpong • Images: KS