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Sugardaddy.jp : my experience

Browcoco

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I’ve benefited greatly from posts on this forum for years, so I thought I would add something on a topic that I hope may be helpful for at least a few people. Much of this is my (subjective) opinion, you may see things differently. Vive la difference. I’ll discuss a little bit about how my experience on sugardaddy differed from my experience on seeking arrangement and other services, but I don’t have any experience with kosai clubs such as universe club, other deai-kei sites like PCMAX or Happy Mail, or establishments like Kirari Club, so unfortunately can’t speak to those. This ended up being much longer than I thought it would be, but I’ve tried to organize it in a reasonably useful fashion.

TLDR: As with other sugar dating services, expect to spend some time sifting through various people until you find what you want. There are vanishingly few non-Japanese people, which can be positive, negative, or neutral depending on your point of view. The site itself isn’t particularly well designed or easy to use, but gets the job done. Financial expectations range widely, but there seem to be fewer “I won’t get out of bed for less than $10K a month” types than on SA, but, conversely, there seem to be a higher number of “sugar dating means platonic” types. If you are looking for someone Japanese and are a fluent speaker yourself, could be worth taking a shot, just don’t expect to find something great right away unless you are lucky.

What is it? Can Gaijins use it?
Sugardaddy.jp is a Japanese sugar dating (or papa-katsu, which, depending on who you ask, may or may not be the same thing) site. Everything on the site is in Japanese, so I can’t imagine someone who can’t at least read Japanese would be able to use it in any meaningful way. I’ve seen profiles of women written all or partially in English (both Japanese and non-Japanese people), so I suppose anything is possible. I’m fluent enough that I can fool Japanese people in phone and in writing into thinking I am Japanese, but in person am clearly and unmistakably a gaijin. Also, though from a Western country, I am not white. There were a few women who were not interested in seeing a gaijin, and a few more who were not interested in seeing a non-white gaijin, but no more and in no greater quantity than on SA (or plain vanilla dating websites, whether in Japan or abroad). One other thing – I am relatively young when it comes to sugar dating services; a few people have also told me that this can be off-putting to some women, but I also found a number who were happy to speak to someone who wasn’t quite old enough to be their dad.

What are people on the site for? What is “papa-katsu?”
First, let me explain what I am (well, was, as I’ve now finally, happily, found what I consider to be an ideal arrangement, so am no longer on the site) looking for, which may not be what you are. My ideal was to find someone I could connect with on a level below a serious, long-term romantic partner but above the level of connection with a service provider. I am not at all interested in paying someone for a platonic relationship, and I would conversely rather go without sex than have a one-nightstand based solely on exchange of money and bodily fluids. (Someone is going to jump on me because of these two sentences, but this post is long enough as it is so I’m going to fight my urge to add a ton of explanation over exactly what I mean.) Along the way, I also got into relationships with women who were in it for the money in a way that made it unsatisfying. Don’t misunderstand - almost all of the women are in it at least partially for the money, but there are some who are also interested in having a real connection with someone who also happens to be able to help them financially, while there are others who would (unenthusiastically, which is I suppose the really disappointing part of it) become involved with anyone who could meet their financial requirements. On the other, other hand, I met a few women who were using this as a way to find older men to be their serious boyfriends, whether or not with a view to eventual marriage. Again, no judgment, just not what I am looking for.

As I see it, the biggest issue is that there isn’t a lot of agreement on what exactly the point of this whole site is, which I think stems in the first place from disagreement about what the term “papa-katsu” means. Papa-katsu is not a fried food – it’s short for “papa katsudo,” or finding an older, financially secure man to take care of you in the way a father-figure might. I don’t know the full history of the term, but many people interpret this to mean a financial arrangement in exchange for romantic (including sexual) companionship. As I understand it (I don’t watch much Japanese TV…), last year there was a TV “dorama” about papa katsu (called “Papa Katsu”), where this was watered down to “an older man who pays you multiple yukichis to have dinner with him.” Adding to the confusion is the way sugardaddy.jp pays affiliate marketers to sell the site to young women – while there are more people looking for a non-platonic relationship, there are also plenty of people who are willing to be solely platonic (and pay you for it!). I’ve heard lots of stories from people claiming that they regularly get paid 30,000 to 50,000 yen just to have dinner. I don’t particularly care to spend any time or effort on finding out whether that is true – if there are people willing to do that, they are more than welcome to do so. I just don’t think it’s realistic for young women to think that platonic relationships are the norm (or that there are going to be plenty of men lining up to pay them just to have dinner together). However, as long as people are up front about only being interested in that, fine by me.

What I found more insidious was the number of people who either have no intention of ever being anything more than platonic with anyone and lie about it, either forthright or through a lie of omission, and who earn free meals and “taxi money” just by going on dates. After some time, you can tell who these people are, and by the time I was ready to leave the site, I was spending less time on them than previously, but there are quite a few people on the site who fall into this category.

On the other hand, there are plenty of men on the site who see it either as an alternative to deli-heru or other fuzoku services, or who promise money in exchange for companionship and end up never paying (and, honestly, fuck those people (or, rather, don’t fuck them)). Some people view it as an extension of other deai-kei sites and are looking just for a quick wari-kiri type meeting. Yet other men view it as an alternative to kosai clubs or trying to find a long-term mistress. All of these people are looking for different things and are probably willing to pay different amounts, etc., and there isn’t a lot of effort to clear up confusion among members.

Is it worth it? How does it compare to Seeking Arrangement?

So what does this mean? In my case, I spent a certain amount of time weeding out women who were clearly and explicitly looking only for a platonic relationship (and I sincerely appreciated those who said so up front either in their profiles or while messaging) and a LOT of time meeting with/weeding out women who were looking for a free meal and taxi money with no intention of going further. I also spent more time that I should have on unsatisfying encounters with women who were interested in non-platonic relationships but were unenthusiastic about it/me. Money-wise, I’ve probably spent in the 1.5-2.5 million yen range over a bit more than a year between dates, hotels, and financial support, which is within my discretionary spending ability, and despite any disappointments, in terms of satisfaction vs money spent, has been a better use of money for me personally than if I had spent it on traditional P4P services, which I almost always find to be disappointing. (If you measure value as a ratio of money to orgasms, this is probably not a good value proposition for you.) By the way, I’ve found basically zero correlation between how much I am willing to spend in a sugar relationship and my satisfaction with it. One of the most unsatisfying encounters I had was with a woman (probably the most beautiful one I met through the site) who originally asked for 300,000 yen for a visit to a hotel together. I told her honestly that I was not interested, as there was no way I could do that multiple times a month for any extended period of time, and eventually we agreed on something more reasonable, but between our lack of chemistry, her lack of enthusiasm, and the fact that she lived at home and had an early curfew that made logistics a nightmare, it did not work out. My current arrangement is at a very reasonable level financially (and I often help her with other expenses or issues she might have, without any expectation of anything more from her, mainly because I genuinely like her and want her to be happy).

I didn’t have an overall positive experience with Seeking Arrangement, partially because of what I am looking for. Also, the problem may be with me, but I found I had a much harder time getting responses to messages or getting to the meet and greet stage with people on SA. I have no idea what the ratio of men to women on SA in Tokyo is, but I suspect that it is less favorable to men than sugardaddy.jp is. I do think that SA is taking more proactive steps to clarify that it isn’t a site for platonic relationships, which is an overall positive in my book, but I think that the lifestyle levels pre-set into it lead to unrealistic expectations (even factoring in the high proportion of people who pick a level seemingly at random or without regard to what SA’s definition of that level is). Also, for obvious reasons, there are many, many more people on a website aimed at Japanese people than there SA (does SA even have Japanese language support?). That fact alone makes sugardaddy.jp a better use of money for me. The other complaint I had about SA (which isn’t much of a complaint, since you can just ignore those people) were all of the messages I got, scam or not, from people not physically in Japan who are looking for someone to finance their trip here, sight unseen. Again, for obvious reasons, that’s not a problem in a service which is targeted at Japanese people in Japan. On the flip side, I had a LOT of women on sugardaddy who promised to meet and then either cancelled, blocked me, or deleted their accounts at the last minute. That was, obviously, extremely annoying. I also had a relatively low response rate, which was probably a combination of my unverified status, gaijin-ness, and lack of publicly available photo. I am fine with all three of those things so I don’t particularly care.
That all being said, look, sugar dating is very hit-or-miss; I wouldn’t advise anyone to expect anything different here.

How do you join? What are the membership levels?
Women sign up for free, as do men, although, for men, the all-important message feature is limited to 10 messages unless you are a paying (“premium”) member, which costs approximately 3000 to 5000 yen per month, depending on the length of your subscription. Being a premium member also lets you do things like hide your online status, hide your profile from all members other than those you choose, and opt not to leave “footprints” showing people you have viewed their profiles. I would also add that the site design is clunky, so don’t expect this all to work seamlessly necessarily. Sometimes I would avoid peak times to log in as the experience could be very frustrating.

Both men and women, due to Japanese rules for dating service operators, are required to submit proof of age, meaning a (partially redacted, if you prefer) copy of a government ID. For me, that would be a complete non-starter; however, if you join as a premium member and pay by credit card they assume that you are above 18. (Now, how safe that is is another question; you can find ways to pay anonymously if you search the internet, though.) One possible downside is that your profile will not say 本人確認 (identity verified) on it, so it’s conceivable that a potential partner may be unwilling to message or meet you due to that. In over a year of on and off usage, one young lady did ask me why I didn’t have the badge and stopped responding to me when I didn’t have an answer that satisfied her; it’s possible that of the tens of people who didn’t respond to me, some were at least motivated by this in part as well.

There is an additional level of verification available for men, whereby you verify your income level by providing a copy of your most recent tax bill/statement. I also found this a complete non-starter, so never took that step, but, at least according to information on 2 Chan boards, being so-called “Diamond Verified” gets you more view and responses (and I did see a few profiles claiming to be interested only in Diamond members). You can also see the number of people any given female member has messaged, how often she has posted on the bulletin board (more on that later), her join date, and maybe some other information, but, as I mentioned, I’m not interested in sending someone a copy of my tax bill, so I’ve never done it.

What goes into a profile?
For men, you choose a nickname, the prefecture you live in, your age, your income and net worth (Diamond verified members can list up to the income shown on their tax statement.), your height, your body type, and your field of employment and write a little blurb about yourself. You can also upload photos, with a “private photo” function as well. I found the private photo function to be a bit annoying, as you were given one PIN number which unlocks all your photos; theoretically anyone with the number could view them and there isn’t a good way to stop them other than turning your profile private and not giving them access at all. The downside of this is that you have to turn your profile private, which doesn’t let other members view you. My preferred method was to send through the message feature, which has the added benefit of not allowing the other person to save the photo directly (although there is nothing stopping them from taking a screenshot).

For women, it’s similar. Nickname, blurb, employment, age, height, body type, location, photos. Women also choose a descriptor about the kind of relationship they are looking for: “start with a meal,” “match what the other person is looking for,” and “enthusiastic.” I think these are supposed to roughly track what, e.g., universe club uses (types A through E, I believe). As far as I am aware, there is no real explanation of this on the website, though, so there are pretty big differences in interpretation among the members. Many women, for example, choose “start with a meal” or “match what the other person is looking for” when they really mean “I will never do anything but have a meal with you or let you take me shopping.” Then again, there is some signaling value to choosing the “match what the other person is looking for” tier. My experience with women identifying as “enthusiastic” was that, although they were more likely to sleep with you, they were also more likely to be closer in nature to professional or semi-professional service providers. Not what I was looking for, but something certainly to keep in mind.

How does it work? How do you find other people?
There are a few features for finding possible matches. When you log in, the home screen shows you the people who have recently joined, as well as who is currently online. I didn’t find this particularly useful, as it shows people regardless of their location – knowing who recently joined in Shimane prefecture is not useful information for me.

The most useful function (if you can call it that…) for me was just the search function. You can narrow by an age range, location and “type” (see above). You cannot search by height or body type, which I found to be annoying. You can sort a search by date of joining, so you can see which people are “old hands,” but that is only relative to the other members. If you want to affirmatively know when a person joined, you need to get diamond verified. My method for finding people was: search by age range and location (through trial and error, I knew I definitely did not want to see anyone below 21 and above 28) and look for “match what the other person is looking for” types. I’d have to check each specific profile to weed out the body types I was not interested in (but I read every profile anyway to weed out the platonic only types). This was long and onerous, and I wish the search function was more useful, but, alas, it was not.

Both men and women also can post on the bulletin board (you can only see posts from members of the opposite sex). I answered a few BB adds, but none of them worked out. All were either regular posters who were just looking for a free meal and taxi money (and in a few cases, would, after agreeing to meet, ask whether I would buy dinner for her friend or friends, and, by the way, provide her friend/s with taxi money as well?). All in all, I didn’t find the bulletin board function to be of any use.

There are two other matching functions – “Sugar Daddy Matching” and “Business Trip Matching.” For “Sugar Daddy Matching,” you input the dates on which you are available for, well, dates, and the site will match you with women from the same prefecture who have also indicated that they are free on those days. It’s then up to you to message them. My impression is that most people do not update their calendars on the site, so you never know if someone is actually free when you view your matches, which made the whole thing somewhat pointless. “Business Trip Matching” lets you input when you are going to be in another part of Japan and shows you women from that prefecture who have indicated they are free on those dates. I like the concept, but I don’t go on that many business trips within Japan, and I think you’d have the same problem with people not keeping their availability up to date, so I never ended up using it.

Conclusion
That’s really it (this was a long post….) but I hope someone somewhere finds this helpful. Good luck to anyone looking
 
Great post. Thanks for letting us know about an SA alternative. I think I'll have to read it again to comprehend it all. Glad you found something that works for you.

I did some sugar dating for a while after learning about it on TAG but that was kind of short lived. I could talk about it all day but long story short, it just didn't work out.
 
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Great post. Thanks for letting us know about an SA alternative. I think I'll have to read it again to comprehend it all. Glad you found something that works for you.

I did some sugar dating for a while after learning about it on TAG but that was kind of short lived. I could talk about it all day but long story short, it just didn't work out.

Thank you, sir. Re-reading it, it’s quite the information dump, so happy to answer any follow ups you might have.

I’ve had ups and downs on the whole sugar dating thing myself. Funnily enough, I found that I would experience long dry spells of nothing interesting (ie no one I was interested in chatting with or meeting), followed by short periods of a ton of responses.

One thing I would add. I would not trust unduly any photos posted on sugar daddy. Young Japanese women are extremely likely to use the Snow app to edit their photos, and some people used photos of models or other celebrities, minor or major (I would never have realized but for my habit of always google image searching photos shared with me.). Some of the most attractive people I met were those who had no photos and were unwilling to share, and towards the end, so long as they had an actual profile, I only messaged those people.
 
I could talk about it all day but long story short, it just didn't work out.

I agree it is a good post. It also reaffirms my notion that sugar dating is for a pretty selected group of guys. The post made it clear that I definitely currently don't belong to that group and that is very helpful to know.
 
I agree it is a good post. It also reaffirms my notion that sugar dating is for a pretty selected group of guys. The post made it clear that I definitely currently don't belong to that group and that is very helpful to know.

I think that there are quite a few reasons why it might not be the right thing for any given person, and definitely would encourage people to consider it before putting any real time or effort into it. One thing I really like about Tokyo is that there is probably something for everyone, even if that something isn’t sugar dating, so none of us have to go completely without.

Your post also reminded me to add that, although I don’t think sugar dating in general or this site in particular is cost effective if you are valuing things purely as a ratio of orgasms vs money spent, you probably could achieve more sex for less money than I spent if that were your goal. (Not to assume you were commenting about money necessarily, but just the connection I made.)
 
So I just joined the site after reading your really long post haha but thank you for writing it up though. I just have one question which is that how do you "weed out the platonic only types" and how to identify those who might be down for something more intimate?
 
So I just joined the site after reading your really long post haha but thank you for writing it up though. I just have one question which is that how do you "weed out the platonic only types" and how to identify those who might be down for something more intimate?

Well, the first thing is to avoid anyone whose profile explicitly says so (大人の関係は望んでません or some such) . People claim to have seduced women such as these, and it is possible that some just write this to avoid men looking only for a quick wham bam thank you man. I’m not made of time, so I found it best to just skip them though.

Categories on people’s profile are something of a guide. I found many who wrote that they were 積極的 were just that, although some were not and some were interested only in a transactional relationship. I had the most luck with people who listed themselves as 相手に合わせる.

The best course is, of course, just to ask and be up front. I never expected a first meet to be anything but platonic (and said so), but made it clear that I expected that things would eventually go that way. I think the trick is being sufficiently gentlemanly about it. I always started out with some kind of greeting and small talk, and was always polite and gentlemanly particularly in early messages. I’ve heard that a lot of women get a number of “hows 20,000 for 1.5 hours?” Even if that were on offer, it’s not what I was looking for, so being gentlemanly in communications helped broach the subject without coming off as overly aggressive or off putting.
 
Yeah I read someone's post on the bulletin today basically announcing that she is unregistering because many guys are too upfront about it, which she didn't expect at all prior to joining. And I never quite understood the "positive" and "fit to partner" categorization but I guess I will rely on your past experience as I think we are interested in similar things and are both short on time.

By the way, how does your typical success story with girls on these websites go? Date 1: dinner Date 2: shopping Date 3....?
 
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Yeah I read someone's post on the bulletin today basically announcing that she is unregistering because many guys are too upfront about it, which she didn't expect at all prior to joining. And I never quite understood the "positive" and "fit to partner" categorization but I guess I will rely on your past experience as I think we are interested in similar things and are both short on time.

By the way, how does your typical success story with girls on these websites go? Date 1: dinner Date 2: shopping Date 3....?

I almost always would spend some time messaging, trying to get some conversation going. I was looking for someone with at least some conversation skills, so not being able to do this was a flag to me that things weren’t going to work. And I’d always try to set out expectations on both sides so she’d know what I would be willing to provide financially.

First date would always be dinner somewhere reasonably nice - not ramen or a chain izakaya but also not a three starred restaurant. Also would always make sure to ask about food preferences, both so she would be comfortable and also because I cannot stand picky eaters. Some (actually in my experience the best) first meetings would end up with us going to drinks after, which almost always led to a hotel, but it was always mutual in that I didn’t push for it if it seemed not in the cards. For others, it would end in an exchange of Line info and “when can we meet next?” If that was the case, second dates would be generally the same as first. If it clearly wasn’t going to end up with intimacy post second date, I never found it worth my while to go for a third. Not that I didn’t do it, mind you, but it wasn’t worth it other than for the educational value.

By the way, I strongly feel that shopping dates are not worth it. It’s possible that I just don’t get it, but most women I thought appreciated cash over gifts and I enjoy neither shopping for myself or tagging along as someone else shops.

BTW, I never had a good experience answering any ads on the bulletin board, and judging by 2Ch posts neither has anyone else...

Also, this may be unfair, but I had terrible experiences with people unwilling to exchange Line info and wanting to do only KakaoTalk. My sugarbaby confirmed that most girls who do this tend to be semi-pros at this, leading either to just a date or two where she expected to be paid to have dinner and then go home, or a boring dinner date followed by highly unenthusiastic post dinner activities.

Funny note on the side, when I opted for the bank transfer payment method, name of bank account holder is listed as: シナプスコンサルティング (which translates to Synapse Consulting :LOL:)

Lol... that’s apparently the name of the 運営会社. Presumably no relation to the TAGer of the same name... (At least, their website doesn’t show any!)
 
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Date 2: shopping
Shopping with girls is not as for as you might think.
With about half of the daddies i went shopping with it went ok because they listened to what i personally like and while we decide together, they didn't try to push their taste on my too much. But even with guys who were generous and respected my personal taste it was tough, its like stores never have anything nice when you go with someone who has promised to buy you something...

The other half of guys i went with though... Who thinks gap is an acceptable store to take a girl? More men than you would expect.

Decide beforehand to what kind of stores you are gonna go together and make sure it fits both her taste and your budget.

But shopping with someone who is critical can be frustrating so i would recommend against it...
 
What have you fond to be the usual expectations for intimate dates AFTER filtering out the outliers on both extremes for sugardaddy.jp vs SA (post due-diligence, the ones you'd actually consider meeting)?

I am presuming the general expectation for an initial non-intimate interview date is limited to a transportation donation.
 
I had terrible experiences with people unwilling to exchange Line info and wanting to do only KakaoTalk.

Is it that KakaoTalk is a marker of being a pro, or is it something about KakaoTalk?
 
What have you fond to be the usual expectations for intimate dates AFTER filtering out the outliers on both extremes for sugardaddy.jp vs SA (post due-diligence, the ones you'd actually consider meeting)?

I am presuming the general expectation for an initial non-intimate interview date is limited to a transportation donation.

Let me know if I’m understanding your question incorrectly.

Expectations on sugar daddy seem to be between 3 and 8 man per date (or the equivalent) after excluding outliers.

For me personally, it’s not so much about trying to fit into a “market price” as finding someone who I feel comfortable giving 5 to - that is, someone whose companionship is worth about 5 per date to me. If someone I liked were willing to do 3, I would still give 5. I can’t imagine a situation in which I would be willing to do 8.

I found almost no one on SA who fit what I was looking for (early to mid 20s, Japanese, attractive, reasonably responsive and a fun person to be around) which would be worth 5 for me subjectively. (Many people have some or even most of these attributes, including some prolific contributors to this forum!) Putting my personal preferences aside, I think intimate dates on SA are doable at a similar range as sugar daddy, but my feeling was that there were more people looking for significantly more - it’s possible that people are just asking for more and more willing to negotiate, but I didn’t see anyone local who I thought was worth the time based on my subjective factors.

In terms of initial meets, many women didn’t expect any compensation for the first meet, although my preference is to give something even if not asked for. I saw a few girls who asked for 1 as compensation for a preliminary meet; almost all were not worth it for one reason or another. Some will ask for as much as 3 (many papa katsu sites claim that 1-3 is the “market” rate), if I had 2-3x the income and 5-10x the free time that I do I might try meeting one of these people, but I have neither of those so a request for 3 for a preliminary non intimate meeting would always be met with a thanks but no thanks from me.
 
Thanks. I use it cause my Line is filled with real life stuff, but that’s good to remember.
 
Let me know if I’m understanding your question incorrectly
No, you basically got it, I just was wondering where they were positioning themselves, as a direct competitor with SA or trying to capture a different, primarily pay-per-date segment.
 
No, you basically got it, I just was wondering where they were positioning themselves, as a direct competitor with SA or trying to capture a different, primarily pay-per-date segment.

I understand that pay per date is much more common in the whole deiai kei world, which this site is definitely a part of. I don’t think they see themselves as a competitor of SA directly in that the target market here is clearly Japan and Japanese people.
 
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I actually enjoyed shopping with you! You let me look around and choose an item I like instead of giving me suggestions. I just hope that I didn’t take too long.. :p

I remember that little expedition, Shibuya109 I think it was, fondly...but it was an exception to the rule. And I don't recall you taking particularly long.

-Ww