Hi all,
I recently came to Japan for vacation and wanted to gain some experience dating. I've managed to set up 3 dates for this week via Tinder, but I am a bit confused on the results and feel like I'm doing something horribly wrong. Yesterday's went something like this...
--- start ---
We had been talking (phone call) on Line for the past few days because I wanted to try and create an tense but fun/exciting atmosphere (since I don't know Japanese well and she doesn't know English too well). At some point I suggested to hang out, and we decided on Karaoke somewhere in Ikebukuro. So fast forward to yesterday->
I met her at Ikebukuro station, but she had to find me because I was not 100% able to figure out what she looked like in real life. Probably my mistake, I should've asked... anyhow, it was much easier for her to find me instead because I'm a foreigner and I'm black. So I was planning on holding her hands as soon as we met while talking to her a bit, asking her if she thinks I look cool and teasing her about not being able to wake up early. Unfortunately she pretty much darted towards the direction of karaoke and didn't really pause for long enough after meeting. [ I'm still guessing it's my fault, because I should have just gone for her hands, but I was also a bit hesitant because I'm not sure if she'd be annoyed instead of happy about it. I need to work on my confidence and just go for it! ] I was still able to tease her and whatnot during out walk to the place, so there's at least a minor victory...
When we got to the karaoke place, I pretty much had to let her take the lead because I had no idea how the system worked. She was a karaoke buff so she had some sort of card she beeped in with, and said we had to pick drinks. [ At this point I was sorta curing myself for not knowing enough Japanese, because I really wanted to lead the situation, but couldn't. I guess this is one of the limitations of being a foreigner. ] After all that, we went into the elevator and up into the karaoke room.
So when we got into the room, she sat at the back (directly across from the display, near a curved part of the couch) so I wasn't able to immediately sit right next to her as I'd hoped. [ I fixed this over time and eventually ended up side-by-side, but again it was a really frustrating experience and realization that I suck at this. This drives and motivates me to practice more. ]
Ok so here's the crazy thing... we were there for 7 hours. We spent the first half singing and having fun and the other half chatting. [ While we were singing, I tried various times to kino or escalate, but I'm not sure it worked as I'd hoped. I feel like she became very comfortable with me, but that's all. Definitely the wrong feeling...] At some point after we had finished singing and were chatting, I was sort of thinking well fuck it, I'm obviously not going to get anywhere by being indirect so I brought up the topic of Tinder and sex culture in Japan.
Basically I started off by saying that Tinder in Japan is pretty different from America, and that I was wondering if Japanese girls are into sex. [ Note, this was a super drawn out conversation because of our language barrier. I was constantly using google translate to figure out how to word things properly, but eventually we were able to understand eachother ] She told me that in Japan, most girls on Tinder are not looking for sex and that it's mostly a friend thing or an English learning thing. Honestly I was pretty surprised about this, considering I had heard a lot of talk on here about Japanese girls being fairly sexually open. She also mentioned that most people look down upon ONS and sex outside relationships. To be honest, I don't particularly believe this, but I started to think that she was maybe a super naive-type girl?
I kind of wanted to drive home the point and not leave it as a vague Tinder discussion, so said something along the lines of "Between friends and sex friends, I'm looking more for sex friends". And she said that she personally was only looking for friends or to learn English, and that sex was out of the question. At this point I figured that you couldn't get more direct than that, so I resigned myself to just keeping her a friend. We chatted for a while longer after that, and eventually parted ways because she had another thing she had to do. We'll likely be meeting again next week, since she seemed to be pretty enthusiastic about spending more time hanging out.
--- end ---
Anyhow, I already know that there were multiple points in that engagement where I screwed up and probably many other points I don't even know about that went sideways. But she seemed very different from the type of girls you might see at a bar or a club, and I felt like convincing her to sleep with me would be 100x harder than a typical American Tinder girl. I'm not sure if I'm looking at this wrong, but my other Japanese Tinder date went similarly with the girl being a super studious recent college grad. My next one is a pasty chef who spends a lot of time working and has a normally really busy schedule.
So yea, I would love some feedback/advice on all of this. I feel like I'm just flailing around in a lake haha!
I recently came to Japan for vacation and wanted to gain some experience dating. I've managed to set up 3 dates for this week via Tinder, but I am a bit confused on the results and feel like I'm doing something horribly wrong. Yesterday's went something like this...
--- start ---
We had been talking (phone call) on Line for the past few days because I wanted to try and create an tense but fun/exciting atmosphere (since I don't know Japanese well and she doesn't know English too well). At some point I suggested to hang out, and we decided on Karaoke somewhere in Ikebukuro. So fast forward to yesterday->
I met her at Ikebukuro station, but she had to find me because I was not 100% able to figure out what she looked like in real life. Probably my mistake, I should've asked... anyhow, it was much easier for her to find me instead because I'm a foreigner and I'm black. So I was planning on holding her hands as soon as we met while talking to her a bit, asking her if she thinks I look cool and teasing her about not being able to wake up early. Unfortunately she pretty much darted towards the direction of karaoke and didn't really pause for long enough after meeting. [ I'm still guessing it's my fault, because I should have just gone for her hands, but I was also a bit hesitant because I'm not sure if she'd be annoyed instead of happy about it. I need to work on my confidence and just go for it! ] I was still able to tease her and whatnot during out walk to the place, so there's at least a minor victory...
When we got to the karaoke place, I pretty much had to let her take the lead because I had no idea how the system worked. She was a karaoke buff so she had some sort of card she beeped in with, and said we had to pick drinks. [ At this point I was sorta curing myself for not knowing enough Japanese, because I really wanted to lead the situation, but couldn't. I guess this is one of the limitations of being a foreigner. ] After all that, we went into the elevator and up into the karaoke room.
So when we got into the room, she sat at the back (directly across from the display, near a curved part of the couch) so I wasn't able to immediately sit right next to her as I'd hoped. [ I fixed this over time and eventually ended up side-by-side, but again it was a really frustrating experience and realization that I suck at this. This drives and motivates me to practice more. ]
Ok so here's the crazy thing... we were there for 7 hours. We spent the first half singing and having fun and the other half chatting. [ While we were singing, I tried various times to kino or escalate, but I'm not sure it worked as I'd hoped. I feel like she became very comfortable with me, but that's all. Definitely the wrong feeling...] At some point after we had finished singing and were chatting, I was sort of thinking well fuck it, I'm obviously not going to get anywhere by being indirect so I brought up the topic of Tinder and sex culture in Japan.
Basically I started off by saying that Tinder in Japan is pretty different from America, and that I was wondering if Japanese girls are into sex. [ Note, this was a super drawn out conversation because of our language barrier. I was constantly using google translate to figure out how to word things properly, but eventually we were able to understand eachother ] She told me that in Japan, most girls on Tinder are not looking for sex and that it's mostly a friend thing or an English learning thing. Honestly I was pretty surprised about this, considering I had heard a lot of talk on here about Japanese girls being fairly sexually open. She also mentioned that most people look down upon ONS and sex outside relationships. To be honest, I don't particularly believe this, but I started to think that she was maybe a super naive-type girl?
I kind of wanted to drive home the point and not leave it as a vague Tinder discussion, so said something along the lines of "Between friends and sex friends, I'm looking more for sex friends". And she said that she personally was only looking for friends or to learn English, and that sex was out of the question. At this point I figured that you couldn't get more direct than that, so I resigned myself to just keeping her a friend. We chatted for a while longer after that, and eventually parted ways because she had another thing she had to do. We'll likely be meeting again next week, since she seemed to be pretty enthusiastic about spending more time hanging out.
--- end ---
Anyhow, I already know that there were multiple points in that engagement where I screwed up and probably many other points I don't even know about that went sideways. But she seemed very different from the type of girls you might see at a bar or a club, and I felt like convincing her to sleep with me would be 100x harder than a typical American Tinder girl. I'm not sure if I'm looking at this wrong, but my other Japanese Tinder date went similarly with the girl being a super studious recent college grad. My next one is a pasty chef who spends a lot of time working and has a normally really busy schedule.
So yea, I would love some feedback/advice on all of this. I feel like I'm just flailing around in a lake haha!