When Greg was over here visiting, he talked a lot about the hard time he had readjusting to England after 3 years in Japan. “It’s impossible to talk to my friends back home about Japan,” he said. “They just don’t understand anything.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I have the same thing when I go back to America on holiday. Whenever I’m talking about anything Japan related, I always start out by talking in generalities. And then I realize I’m not being fair, so I’ll go back and make all sorts of exceptions and qualifying remarks. But then I feel like I’m loosing my main point, so I’ll start backing off a bit on some of my qualifying remarks. And by the end of it, everything’s so muddled that even I am not sure of what I’m saying.”
This can be true in the world of blog as well. A good example of this was the post I did recently on World War II. I hate to say ‘it was absolute crap’, because that would imply that I take my blog too seriously and hold it to some sort of literary standard.
But…well…it was absolute crap. But that’s okay; it was predestined to be absolute crap. It was a subject too vast and multifaceted to be covered in a blog entry. But I wrote a few thoughts down, I got some stuff out of my system, and I got a couple bits of positive feedback. And so the post served its purpose.
This post as well is destined to be a failure. The dynamics of human relations have as many variables as the number of women in Japan (and then multiplied by the amount of Western men). But, like the post on WWII, it is something that has been in the back of my mind to write about for some time, and perhaps I can make one or two observations before I get bogged down in exceptions and qualifying remarks.
I’ll start simple by sticking to a couple observations that I think are universally agreed upon.
1). It is easier to get women in Japan
When I was in middle school, I remember one of the adult Youth Group leaders talk about the active dating life he had once enjoyed when he lived in England.
“A big part of dating,” he said, “is answering the question, ‘Why should I date you instead of all the other thousands of guys around? What makes you special?’ So if you’re from America, you are already starting out with a huge advantage.”
I’m sure some of this applies to Japan. On the other hand, I’m sure some of it doesn’t. In England you may be just a cool guy with an American accent. In Japan you can’t speak the language, don’t know the culture or manners, and at times become reduced to being just a big child, struggling to say the simplest of things. I’m not sure if girls find that attractive or not. But, we’ll get bogged down in qualifying remarks later. For now let’s just keep this simple.
In Japan we definitely stick out a lot, and that in itself is a big advantage. In Japan, Japanese men are everywhere, but foreigners are rare and therefore often more valued by the girls.
The bombardment of American media and American movies have convinced many Japanese people that the white American is the embodiment of ideal beauty. And with few foreigners around for comparison, every white person is thought to look like Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt.
There is the perception that American males or more chivalrous and romantic than Japanese men. Just the simple act of letting a woman go through the door first scores you major points over here, as Japanese men are not in the habit of doing it.
And of course in some cases the Japanese woman is interested in dating the Western man for ulterior motives, such as free English practice, or as a way to get the hell out of Japan. (Many Japanese young people, disillusioned with Japan’s workaholic culture and stifling rules, are looking for an escape).
Now all this being said, it’s time now to qualify things by stating…
The Myth is Greatly Exaggerated
There is, if you look in the right places, already a vast amount of literature on the way Japanese women flock to Western men. The unofficial underground JET website big daikon always contains a lot of posting on this topic. Even official JET publications, essays, and JET writing contest entries often touch on this subject.
If you follow military circles, there is often a lot made about how Japanese girls in Okinawa love to date US service men. Every time an American military rapes an Okinawan girl, and tensions flare up again, a lot of this spills into the mainstream press.
There is a comic strip series circulated in the ex-patriot community here called, “Charisma Man.” The basic premise of the strip is that an average geek from Canada, upon arriving in Japan, is suddenly transformed into a superhero with ‘Charisma powers’, and suddenly enjoys the ability to pick up any woman he desires.
The concept is also present in Japanese pop literature. I was recently reading Doraemon, a popular children’s comic. The main character, Nobita, is at school when a classmate announces his American pen pal will be coming to Japan. There is suddenly a stampede of girls, all shouting questions like, “Is he tall and handsome? Does he have blonde hair and blue eyes? Can you introduce me?” Nobita leaves school dejectedly thinking to himself, “Why are we Japanese men so weak and undesirable.”
All of this is often a source of great frustration to those of us who live in Japan, and feel like our life is not measuring up to the promised expectations. I personally cannot count the number of times I wanted to throw my copy of “Charisma Man” across the room after striking out again at the local bar. Many of my friends have made similar observations.
“I hate it when people say ‘you’re going to have sex all the time when you get to Japan’” a friend once said. “People said the same thing to me about University, and that wasn’t true either.”
I suppose, having now framed the discussion with two seemingly contradictory statements on both sides, this is where things get muddled a bit, and might ultimately depend on each individual person.
My personal theory is that coming to Japan perhaps gives you a leg up, but it doesn’t make you superman. If you weren’t popular with girls back home, you can’t expect to come to Japan and have your pick of any girl. Japanese girls do often find Western men attractive, but looks only get you so far. The ability to be confident, funny, outgoing, etc, all play in. Shyness is still the kiss of death in Japan, as it would be anywhere.
I do know a few people who have really lived the ‘Charisma Man’ life since arriving in Japan.
But that’s just my theory. Many of my friends claim to do worse in the girl department since coming to Japan. I think there are a lot of qualifying factors. So, in the interest of separating the myth from reality, let’s explore some of these.
Timing
There is the theory, and I’ve even seen this in print occasionally, that the ‘Charisma Man’ myth isn’t so much blatantly false as it is simply outdated. In an older, simpler time, there were virtually no foreigners in Japan and Japanese girls swarmed any blond-haired blue-eyed man they could find. Now, with an English teacher on every block and the JET program having infiltrated even the countryside, the ‘Charisma Man’ thing just doesn’t work anymore.
The one or two old timers I’ve had the occasion to meet here have disagreed with this assessment. They say in the old days there were more foreigners in Japan, not less. After the war, the streets were swarming with occupation forces. Because of the gradual pull out of US military bases, US soldiers were still a visible presence into the 1970s.
Perhaps there was a time in the 70s or 80s, between the pull out of US soldiers and the explosion of English teachers, when ‘Charisma Man’ did have a bit more success. I’m not sure. But my feeling is the idea of going to a country and being able to pick up any girl you want is always a male-created fantasy, and not something that really happens.
LocationThis one cuts both ways a bit. Obviously in a big city like Tokyo, foreigners are not a rare sight and no one will look at you twice. In a rural setting, like, say, Ajimu Machi, you are going to get a lot more attention.
But, like the US, the Japanese country towns are dying out fast. Most people graduate from high school, go to University, and never come back. In short the “date-able” pool in the countryside is very small.
This is added to the fact that the few girls of age who are around still live with their parents and are often under strict curfews even into their late 20s. Also small town gossip is very strong, and a foreigner, living a life as almost a local celebrity in the countryside, has absolutely no private life.
The first (and last) girl I asked out in Ajimu told me that she didn’t want to deal with all the town gossip, and turned me down. This was when I was still young and stupid and didn’t realize that it wasn’t a good idea to ask girls in my own town out.
After my second year in Japan, I spent the summer taking a Japanese course in Sapporo, which is one of the biggest cities in Japan. I had been without a girlfriend for 6 months previous, but was surprised at how quickly I hooked up with a girl in Sapporo. Many of my fellow classmates had similar experiences.
I remember discussing over lunch one summer in Sapporo. “Just think about it,” I said, “We’ve all been in the country side the past year and have had absolutely no luck with the girls. We’ve barely been in Sapporo 2 weeks, and already we’re all romantically involved with someone here. Just think how different our lives would be in Japan if we lived in the city instead of the country.”
“But our Japanese wouldn’t be as good,” someone else said. “We are forced to practice our Japanese a lot more in the country.”
I considered this briefly. “Nah, fuck that man. We’d all have girlfriends if we lived in the city.”
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