How to date Japanese women

There’s no question that Japanese women are hot and desirable. There are also tens of millions of them, mostly centered in Japan itself. Japanese women have developed a reputation as beautiful, sexy and sensual beings through hundreds of years of interaction with the rest of the world.

Japanese women might not be as popular as they used to be, but there are still plenty of guys who would love to get with a J-girl for a night or a lifetime. It’s hard to blame them. The land of the rising sun is filled with sexy babes who know how to dress and draw in guys like me and you.

Even though Japanese attitudes towards sex are pretty liberal, having sex with Japanese women isn’t always as easily done as said. More than a few foreigners have found themselves in huge Japanese cities feeling sad, lonely, or bitter.

And even though there is a common misconception that average white guys turn into superstars in Japan, actually getting with Japanese women isn’t always that easy. It can definitely be done, but it’s unfortunately not as easy as landing in Tokyo and announcing “I have arrived!”

There are a lot of different approaches you can take. I’ll break them all down here to give you an idea of the opportunities and obstacles there are for foreigners who want to date and have sex with Japanese women in Japan.

Bars and clubs

Bars and clubs are the most popular places to pick up girls almost anywhere in the world. For foreigners in Tokyo, the best places have always been in Roppongi. It’s not like it used to be though. Bar hoping in Roppingi for “gaijin hunters” is no sure method for success. Going to places like Gas Panic and The Hub is just as likely to lead to nothing as it is to lead to dating or sex.

Apparently things were different back in the 1980’s when Japan was on top of the world. From what I hear, Western guys were king in those days. They had their pick of lots of hungry Japanese chicks who trolled Roppongi looking for foreign men and meat.

Decades later Japan is in a long recession and increasingly seems to be closing itself off to the outside world. The interest in foreigners has waned and the word is out on the once easy pickings in Roppongi. So Japanese guys who often have a resentment towards gaijin to begin with pack into clubs and bring the whole vibe down. I’ve been around the world and to me it looks like a bad scene.

Nanpa: the art of picking up chicks

Despite an infamous declining birth rate, Japan is still packed with people. All you have to do is ride a train on the Yamanote Line or visit Shibuya Crossing to see that. But in the middle of all these people there is a real sense of isolation and loneliness. That is common in a lot of big cities like New York and Moscow but it really seems to be true in Japan, and especially if you are a foreigner.

Nanpa is the ancient Japanese art of picking up strangers on the street. It apparently started as a type of romantic wife hunting but later transformed into the kind of scummy notch accumulating game that so-called pick up artists run in the West. Apparently, nanpa artists even compete to see how many phone numbers or lays they can get in a single outting.

Today, nanpa is most common around major train stations. That’s where nanpa practitioners wait for women to target. They are joined by fuzoku recruiters who try to find women to join their sex shops or shoot porn. Yes, I am serious.

There is even a kind of prostitution solicitation nanpa, but I don’t know how common it is. I learned about from a Japanese girl who worked in an oppai pub but later became a friend with benefits. She said she’d sometimes be approached by much older Japanese guys who would ask her to have tea. If she had time, she would go with them. But they never ended up in a tea shop. Instead they ended up in a love hotel where she would suck them off for money.

Nanpa is difficult for foreigners who don’t speak much Japanese, but some guys claim to be able to pull it off. I have never tried picking up any chicks in front of train stations, but I have been in Japan many times and taken it upon myself to seize on opportunities when they did arise.

I usually don’t have any problem picking up women in most of the world, but I have to admit that it is is tough in Japan. Even things like chatting up baristas at coffee shops rarely leads to anything in Tokyo. Usually the baristas speak next to no English and are quick to move on to some other task.

I have had the most success picking up chicks in Japan when it was obvious they were interested. A good example is the last chick I picked up in Tokyo a few months ago. I was hanging out in a coffee shop when I noticed her across the room. She was okay looking but not spectacular. She saw me checking her out. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out an English language lesson book.

I asked her if she was studying English and things proceeded from there. Later that day we met again for dinner in an izakaya. At the end of the meal I told her I would be leaving soon and said I’d love to take her to a love hotel while I still had the chance. I didn’t have anything to lose and I didn’t really care what her answer was since I didn’t have much time or money invested. She ended up agreeing and off we went. Sometimes, it can be that simple!

Online dating in Japan

Because Japanese society can be so cold and closed, online dating is definitely the best bet for foreign guys who want to find Japanese women. Some of the more popular apps are now starting to catch on in a real way in Japan, but they still aren’t that effective.

Bumble is an app that a lot of chicks in Japan seem to like. I haven’t seen it used too much in other places with the exception of Singapore.

There are also tons of women on Tinder in Tokyo. Unless you have a Tinder gold account, you will run out of swipes without ever reaching the end of the profiles within a few miles of your location.

If my experience is any indication, you will also get a lot of matches too. Here’s the problem: Tinder matches in Tokyo rarely turn in to actual real life meetings. There are a number of reasons for that.

• Most Japanese women cannot speak English.
• A lot of Japanese people work almost every waking hour of their lives.
• Most of the women on Tinder in Japan are not interested in tourists.
• A lot of the Japanese women on Tinder just use the app as an ego boost and time waster.

There’s not much you can do about the fact that most Japanese people don’t speak English. Even though they spend years studying the language in school, the simple fact is that the vast majority cannot engage in any kind of conversation in English. If you’re serious about meeting Japanese women, your best bet is to learn some Japanese. Otherwise, you’re stuck dealing with the small percentage of the population who can speak English or some other language like Spanish. Google translate can only take you so far. In the case of Japanese, it can’t take you far at all.

If you want to avoid women who don’t speak English, just look at their Tinder profiles. If all the text is in Japanese, there’s a good chance they don’t speak English. So there’s no need to like them. Just swipe right and move on to the next profile.

You can’t do much about the crazy work requirements in Japan. It is not uncommon for an office lady to go to work early in the morning and return home around midnight. Even though this “work ethic” leads to more exhaustion than productivity it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. So even when you match with a woman on Tinder and manage to talk her into meeting you, it is not uncommon for her to say something like “let’s have coffee when I have free time two weeks from now on Sunday.” Do you want to wait two weeks for the luxury of buying a coffee for someone you’ve never met?

There are also a lot of Japanese women on Tinder who use the app to pass time. Some people play Angry Birds. They swipe through Tinder profiles. They see it as just another game. The more matches they get, the better they feel about themselves. Japanese women spend huge amounts of time and money on makeup and fashion to make themselves look good. Obviously they want validation. They don’t necessarily want actual contact with men though. They just want men to want them!

Some serious Japanese women with minimal English skills and heavy work loads are still willing to find a way to meet foreign guys. After all, that’s why they use Tinder in the first place. They’re not like the chicks who use the app like a game. But guess what? They are absolutely not interested in tourists or business travelers. A lot of them will state it right up front in their profiles. Others bring it up early in conversations. The first or second message they send in Tinder will be something like “are you here on holiday?” If you say yes, they say no and end the conversation.

Classified sites

An old option that died in most of the world can still be useful in Japan. That is throwing up a personal ad or a direct request for a hook up in the classifieds. Even that is getting tough though. Craigslist was actually quite good in Japan. But they recently did away with their personals section due to the passage of new laws in America.

Craigslist was never that popular in Japan. But people did use it. Most of them were familiar with other countries and interested in people and languages from outside of their own country. So it was the best option for English speakers.  The personals section got a good amount of traffic, and it didn’t get  overloaded with spam or hookers.

I have met a good amount of Japanese women for sex this way. Basically I just made a post in the man for woman section that was clear and upfront without being insane. That means no dick pics or crazy requests. I just said that I was in town for a few weeks and looking for someone to meet for a no strings attached fling. I normally got four or five responses every time. That’s not bad for a few minutes of effort and no expense!

Of course most Japanese people in Tokyo live with family or roommates, so we normally met somewhere public like a cafe or train station and then mutually agree to go to a love hotel. Thankfully Japan is full of them!

Now that the Craigslist personals section is gone, there are fewer options. Especially for English speakers. There are a lot of Japanese personals sites. But they’re difficult or impossible to use if you can’t read and write Japanese.

Happening bars

Happening bars are the Japanese version of swinger clubs. They usually look like regular bars but have special play areas where people can get down and dirty. Everything from bondage to group sex goes down in these happening bars which are actually pretty popular.

Happening bars in Japan are different from swinger clubs in the West in a few ways. One is that they usually have decent looking people inside instead of the stereotypically elderly and overweight swingers that are common in America or Europe. Another difference is that they usually allow single guys to enter, even if they charge them a little more for the privilege.

Japan can seem to be very discriminatory when it comes to adult entertainment. Anyone who has tried to enter a Japanese pink salon will know that first hand. Somewhat suprisingly, most happening bars will actually open their doors to foreigners, but only if they can speak Japanese. Guys who can’t speak Japanese are limited to a select few bars with English-speaking staff.

In Tokyo that means 9259 and Bliss Out in Kabukicho and Sleeping Beauty in Shibuya. They are all open to foreigners and single guys. They can get busy too, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. The clubs are quiter on other days of the week.

Of course if you have a Japanese woman with you, you can gain entrance into almost any happening bar. But if you already have a Japanese woman with you who is willing to have sex with you and presumably others too, then you don’t need this guide!

Compensated dating

Because dating and hooking up can be so difficult or time consuming in Japan, a whole new trend of compensated dating, or enjo kosai, has come into being. Basically it breaks down like this: guys want to date and have sex with Japanese women. A lot of those guys find it difficult. They had money and desire but not avenue for finding what they wanted. Women with more time than money picked up on that and starting renting themselves out for cash.

Japanese guys use everything from websites to dating cafes and dating clubs to meet women for compensated dating. They have a lot of options. But they can read and write Japanese fluently. For people who can’t things are, or at least were, a lot more difficult.

Until recently, foreigners didn’t really get involved in compensated in Japan. When the Universe Club opened up to foreigners, it became possible for dudes with more money than time to shell out some Yen to spend time with their dream J-girl.

The Universe Club isn’t cheap at all, but it has a rooster of thousands of women across Japan along with a website in English and people working at the company who speak English fluently. It is mainly in the business of making introductions. For the most part, they step out of the picture after making introductions. So they aren’t like pimps who feed off of paid relationships forever. They just take a cut for making a match. To me, that ain’t too bad.

Especially considering the significant amount of time and effort it can take to make a Japanese girlfriend or even screw one or two in one night stands.

Compensated dating in Japan usually leads to sex, but not always. The only sure bet is paying for sex in Japan outright. Foreigners are not allowed in many Japanese sex shops. But there are plenty of options. I cover foreigner-friendly prostitution in detail elsewhere on the site.