The State Of Pickup And Nanpa

[Sinapse]

There is a lot of confusion as to what exactly "PUA," game, pickup, nanpa, etc is. This post hopes to clear up a few misconceptions while making the discussion a bit more complex (in the right way). Let's begin with a few definitions.. These are just my own at the moment, other people are free to come up with their own if they like

PUA - Anglosphere practitioners of "pickup" who apply the systematic studying and testing of behaviors and beliefs on interactions with persons of romantic interest. Fundamentally a Western practice and ideology.

Pickup - Talking to previously unknown women with the purpose of finding a romantic/sexual partner.

Game - A person's effort towards getting sex or romance with another person.

Gamer - A person who proactively meets potential sexual partners and tries to improve their success

Thus, the casual guy (and every other guy) has "game" and it may be good or bad. However, he doesn't do pickup usually except perhaps at bars or clubs occasionally. A gamer also has game, which might be good or bad, but at least he's trying to improve actively.

Game and Naturals​

Every guy ‘has’ game in varying amounts, ranging from “naturals” who, without studying anything, seem to just magnetically attract women to themselves. Everybody has that friend or knows that guy who somehow just seems to end up with women without any real effort on his part. To the natural, pickup seems pretty strange because he doesn’t realize that not everybody has game as good as he does.

Normal Guys​

The vast majority of guys, however, don’t really have much ‘game’ at all, and just rely instead on talking to whatever girls are near them in whatever way they can. They try to make small talk, befriend the girls normally, and rely heavily on social circle introductions and women who are near them for their dating pool. They generally don’t really know what to do with an attractive woman when they get her, and thus have difficulty keeping attractive women around them. Occasionally, and often in proportion to how large their social circle is, they will get girlfriends, and sometimes - if those girls don’t have many other good options or if the guy is particularly well put-together (in terms of career, fashion, fitness, etc), those girlfriends will be quite nice. By and large these guys will end up marrying one of the first girlfriends they have, convinced their feelings are the deepest love they can have. Often, these marriages end up in cheating, divorce, or dissatisfaction, which makes sense - the guys didn’t really experiment much with what they like before settling down (remember the average sexual partners is somewhere around 10 for the modern male) and thus can’t really be sure that they married the woman because they truly liked her or because she provided them with something few other women have - sex and a relationship. Scarcity inflates value, etc etc.

Discovering "The Community"​

Enough frustration and a bit of courage and entitlement, and a guy might google online how to get a girlfriend or how to talk to girls. He comes from sexual scarcity, which means that he does not have access to as much free sex as he would like. Thus, his first goal is to acquire sex. This can mean either to get a girlfriend, or just to have random casual sex with whoever is near and willing. He stumbles across pickup material, which tells him in varying ways to man up, stop sucking up to women, grow some balls and talk to women he likes proactively, and stop having horrible “small talk” conversations, among other things.

Naturals vs. The First PUAs​

This is the “market” or the background forces which made the pickup community. There were a few guys, initially on forums or boards not unlike this one, who had been going out a lot and talking to a LOT of women. These weren’t naturals - because naturals aren’t really aware of their own skill or how to teach it - nor were they “normal guys” who just wanted to have their standard 10 sexual partners then get married to the tenth. They were guys who looked around at the attractive women who were walking around everywhere, and driven by desire, strove to get them.

First-Wave Pickup​

The famous initial PUAs - guys like Mystery, Style, Matador, David D, Ross Jeffries, and Tyler - focused initially on “techniques”. They took up the cultural myth of the “pickup line,” the one magical line that would open the gates to the woman’s vagina. They ran with it and expanded it. They were convinced that what separated the naturals from the average guys (AFCs, or Average Frustrated Chumps), was just behavioral - if they could somehow copy the natural’s behaviors, they too would get laid like a boss. This era was the heyday of NLP, “routine stacks,” “negs,” “openers,” “DHVs,” and other similar “moves” which were deployed in certain patterns, almost like pressing buttons on a controller. And these got results, to a certain degree. A hallmark of this era was over-the-shoulder opinion openers with FTC - false time constraints (“I have to get back to my friends soon, but can I get your guys’ opinion on something..”).

The intention behind this was good. The FTC would assure the girl that you wouldn’t be hanging in there far past your welcome. The “over-the-shoulder” body language was meant to be non-threatening, as if the approach was almost an afterthought before you were on your way. The opinion opener was meant to put low pressure on the interaction, and make it so the girl could give some emotional content easily without the confrontational “accept or reject my approach” setup of most pickup lines.

And the result - to seem casual, non-threatening on the open, increase their sexuality and touchiness (“kino”) whereas before these guys were herbacious friendly beta males, terrified of touching a girl, etc etc - was overall a positive one compared to what they were doing before - which was nothing. Guys learned to own their own actions and intentions rather than be afraid of them, to go up to a girl with the “right” things to say to direct the conversation rather than terrified and making lame small talk, and make things sexual and emotional pretty quickly rather than skirt around safe, boring topics like the weather, then were taught to isolate and escalate after building comfort rather than letting the interaction fizzle out.

BUT it was (especially some of the more intense routines) manipulative and dishonest. Routine stacks and compliance ladders, “the cube,” the “Octoberman sequence” “strawberry fields” and other similar elaborate routines were all stuck together as tools in the toolkit, to deploy to shatter ice shields of cocktail waitresses or Abercrombie models, then hook them in to you like little addicts. This was the dark side, the part of pickup that left a nasty taste in the mouths of both women and normal guys on the outside looking in.

There was another huge problem with this “first wave” of pickup. It totally ignored the person - on both sides of the interaction. Namely, it was a cookie-cutter approach that any man could deploy and it would work (to a degree) on any woman. That was its appeal, but also its massive shortcoming. What you were left with was a bunch of same-night lays, and then after the smoke and mirrors clears, you are left with a girl you don’t really know that well and you’ve used up all your routines. Sure, you had sex with her, but was this really you? With no more routines left, you were there, naked and still the same guy as before you learned all this “knowledge,” in all your flaws and mostly unchanged.

Second-Wave Pickup​

The “second wave” of pickup was radically different from this. The second wave was based on inner game. The idea here was that you have to master yourself and become an attractive man of value first, then get the girls. Second-wave pickup is a direct criticism of first-wave pickup, and it realized that if you merely use techniques, you are still that same unattractive guy you were before you learned the techniques. In short, the techniques are manipulation and dishonesty - using parlor tricks to seduce a girl who wouldn’t be attracted to the normal you. The focus shifted from learning “facts” and routines to self-development. The idea was everyone should be improving all the time and in all aspects of their life - first become the attractive man, then anything you say or do will be attractive.

“Openers” were exiled from the gospel and replaced with simplicity. Routines were shunned for their role as a “crutch” for weak game. Instead, guys were taught to open with simple things like “Hi” or a self-introduction and trust in themselves. They were taught to fix their wardrobe and hit the gym, meditate to center and clear their minds, eat healthy to feel better and have more energy, read books to increase their knowledge - things which will make any guy more attractive. They were told to make normal friends and pursue meaningful hobbies. And above all, they were told to gain reference experiences and take action. Through action and experience, and through changing your beliefs and improving as a man, you will get better and more high quality women. And it’s not a trick or manipulation - because there are no routines or lies, just your own self. You become naturally attractive first, then merely go up to a woman and start a non-scripted, spontaneous conversation. The amount of women you "get" is a direct result of your ability to 1. Improve yourself, 2. Convey yourself honestly, and 3. Lead the interaction forward

Japan Game/Nampa​

Nampa has a long history entirely independent from Western pickup and brings with it its own cultural connotations and practice. Japanese guys have been doing it for decades, and @Dorian Gray learned pickup from nampa masters and with almost no external influence (meaning - no Western pickup material). These guys have similar but different pickup methods to Western practitioners. However, the game is much different for foreigners in Japan than it is anywhere else.

Attempts to bring first-wave PUA over to Japan failed woefully. However, Japanese nampa proved a powerful combination with second-wave pickup, which is where we now stand. Japan game remains fundamentally separate from Western pickup, and yet the ideas are starting to blend. Japan will always be a bit different from the West because we communicate from different cultural understanding, different language (often), and yet equal socio-economic position... at least when comparing countries most of us are from (a typical Japanese person is roughly the same SES as a typical Westerner). This means that unlike the 80s /90s, Westerners aren't really fetishized and you need more than to just show up to get laid.


Dorian Gray summed up the relation between culture, class, and pickup in his 2013 post “RSD: Real Social(ist) Dialectics"

1) Any analysis of game which ignores class dynamics will always be incomplete.


2) You cannot game a working class girl in the same way you would a middle class girl.


3) Capitalism teaches women to view themselves as commodities. "I have to look like this, have to act like this, have to be married before a certain age." Understand this reification and you're on your way to understanding why girls act how they act.


4) The working classes are more racist and more nationalist than the middle classes; internationalization is an advantage of the comparatively wealthy. There are no working class milkers. But the middle classes, indoctrinated by the Japanese education system, are no less capable of thinking stereotypically. So choose your poison and work on immunizing yourself.


5) Real Social(ist) Dialectics teaches that You Are Not Enough: personal changes of an attitudinal or cosmetic nature are not by themselves enough to overcome endemic class-based conditioning. Focusing only on yourself and not the girl's mindset, as determined by economic and historical forces, will never lead to ultimate success. Put another way, your intrinsic qualities are still mediated by social relations. "Value" is not an objective currency. It's the "Warren Buffett getting ignored in Atom" principle.


6) Revolutionary Solidarity means not blaming girls for growing up in the time and place they did and seeking to engage with them through lived experience.


7) Direct nanpa is direct praxis!


8 ) The "PUA" industry presumes a monoculture; or rather, attempts to situate itself as "natural" while it is in fact culturally specific. There is no "natural" game - everything is mediated by social and economic forces, and your interactions with women are mediated by your culture. Applying Western game in non-Western areas is like trying to find your way around Osaka with a map of Philadelphia - the concept of "city" might be similar, but nothing else is. Real Social(ist) Dialectics urges you to examine the intersections of race, class and culture and how they affect your game, since while "PUA" is American, we are not in America and American is not the default human setting. How you relate to women in one country and culture should not be the same as how you relate to them somewhere else. Assumptions like "all women are the same" and "natural game works anywhere" reinforce monocultural blindness, and more importantly, prevent you from getting hotter girls. Crossculturalism is the future.

Japan game is still quite different from typical Western game, and attempts to apply Western game cut-and-paste to Japan have failed many times before. The novelty factor for foreigners in general and white guys in particular has fallen off dramatically, to the degree where with some demographics and with girls who are more attractive, it can even be a disadvantage. Cultural understanding is necessary to an insane degree here. Thus, Japan game has evolved into quite a unique niche. You definitely do need tight game to succeed in Japan these days, and tight game in Japan comes down to (in no particular order):

1. Cultural awareness (language, media, phrases, customs)
2. Right Action (taking action towards talking to women who excite and interest you)
3. Reflection (being able to reflect and improve from your previous self and interactions)
4. Technical Skill (dealing with AMOGs/friends, logistics, bouncing, texting, etc)
5. Empathy and Genuine Interest (ability to understand the girl in front of you - her values, desires, and choices, being able to tell which girls you have true affinity with and which you don't)
6. Self-improvement (making youself into the best person you can be)

In contrast,

It would be even more interesting and useful, imo, if you pointed out what you consider to be bad advice/techniques (perhaps some the you have "called out") as well as some good. The comparison would be instructive I suspect.

What I think would be "bad advice / techniques" would be anything that ignores the six points above I mentioned. For example (points ignored in parentheses):

-touching the girl on the street (1)
-not understanding (or trying to understand) the girl (1, 5)
-(only) waiting for girls to come to you / not approaching girls you like for any reason (2)
-Relying on any particular technique or verbal routine (3, 6)
-"Be yourself" (3, 6.. this one could be talked about a lot.. it isn't necessarily "bad" advice as much as it is incomplete)
-Wanting or claiming to have a "magic pill" (2, 6)
-Manipulating the girl (5)
-"Every hole is a goal" (2, 5)
-Berating a girl,calling her a slut or a bitch, etc (3, 5, 6)
-Do whatever necessary to have sex (5)
-"Game" isn't necessary / doesn't work (4, 6)

TL;DR, pickup is very diverse and changes depending on the agent, recipient, situation, class, culture, country, age, era, time of day, and probably any other variable you can think of.

 

[User#8628]

It's interesting that Japanese boys can do pick up as a (part time) job.
Scout is pretty amazing, but a lot of work if you look at how often pick up doesn't work.

Thank you for the interesting read.

 

[Ascent]

Some comparison and contrast of PUA to nampa might be valuable given what you have written here.

Based on talking to nampashi and reading online in Japanese, I'm not aware of much to it beyond a body of physical and mental technique which tends to resemble what you identified as "first wave", albeit with different cultural trappings. Where to go, how to approach, how to avoid her blowing you out and how to cope with the whole business mentally. I've yet to see any effort to tie it into a pseudo-scientific framework as with PUA either (or even a pathetic pseudo-Marxist one as you reproduced here).

Also, I'm not really sure how to "understand" a woman in the conventional sense when she is the sort to give her hobbies as fashion, sleeping and playing with her cat (not that this sort of thing is exclusive to Japanese women or women at). Physically and emotionally, you mean?

 

[User#8628]

when she is the sort to give her hobbies as fashion, sleeping and playing with her cat

I can't imagine there are any things better than fashion, sleeping and cats.

 

[Dorian Gray]

This is a great overview that I think should make a lot of things more clear. I've never identified as a "PUA" and have instead used the term "gamer" because for me it connotes an activity rather than an identity and seems both more expansive and more inclusive. "PUA" will always be tied to a time and culture-specific image of clownish pickup artists in bars trying to get laid as much as possible. Whereas game doesn't just include sex but also things like building a large social circle and improving your cultural communication skills. Game for me is just the idea that human relations aren't fixed; the ugly guy can get the hot girl, the poor guy can get the heiress and the old woman can make off with the younger man. Sounds simple, but it actually seems to be pretty controversial; clearly lots of people are invested in the status quo, and/or it's a case of "tall poppy syndrome" as the Australians say - or in other words, people getting pissy when their friends don't "know their place" and start doing better in life.

I'd argue that the real father of Japan Game was Nubreed, a blogger and forum poster whose blog is, if I remember right, still around. Nubreed - who similarly never saw himself as a "PUA" - applied strictly empirical methods to approaching Japanese girls (i.e. start with a goal and try multiple experimental methods until the goal is reached). Almost everyone else who was around back then seemed lost in a fog of secondhand information, whereas Nubreed started from scratch by learning from Japanese gamers.

I've yet to see any effort to tie it into a pseudo-scientific framework as with PUA either (or even a pathetic pseudo-Marxist one as you reproduced here).

Also, I'm not really sure how to "understand" a woman in the conventional sense when she is the sort to give her hobbies as fashion, sleeping and playing with her cat (not that this sort of thing is exclusive to Japanese women or women at). Physically and emotionally, you mean?

Have you considered that your inability to understand women may be related to your not having read enough books on Marxist dialectics and cultural theory? Haha, just kidding...anyway, I'd recommend learning to think of everything you just listed as a discrete item that you can extract a surprisingly large amount of information from. I'd look at it this way:

1) Fashion - this is really an entire galaxy, isn't it? Right away we're dealing with men's fashion, women's fashion, and the intersection of the two. In Japan this is HUGE; the fashion choices a women makes are indicative of her age, social position, subculture, job, interests, etc. Even more than in the West, fashion codes who people are. If you're conversant with specific brands, it goes even further. I'll often approach girls by remarking on what they're wearing - in some cases (as with specific subcultures like visual-kei or circle-active gyaru), identifying the brands they're wearing also allows me to intuit with a high degree of certainty what their favorite bands are, what movies they watch, what their job most likely is, etc. Women enjoy being approached by men who already seem to know something about them. Not to mention all the time you can save by eliminating lame-ass questions ("Where did you buy this?" "What are your hobbies?" etc.)

2) Sleeping - I could also expand on this one for probably an hour or so. In particular I usually relate it to the tiredness felt by almost everyone who works in Japan. If a woman gave her hobby as sleeping I'd expand on the theme of relaxation and how the stresses of life and work can get us down. It's a great topic that almost everyone can relate to and vent some of their frustrations with.

3) Playing with her cat - I'd find out what age that cat is, what breed and how she plays with it. Has she been to one of those cat cafes? Is she more of a cat person than a dog person and what does that imply about her personality? Is she a general animal lover or not?

You really have to be able to find human interest in everything. It can be challenging but definitely pays off. If nothing else you'll learn to relate to people who are vastly outside your normal sphere of interactions.

 

[Ascent]

1) Fashion - this is really an entire galaxy, isn't it? Right away we're dealing with men's fashion, women's fashion, and the intersection of the two. In Japan this is HUGE; the fashion choices a women makes are indicative of her age, social position, subculture, job, interests, etc. Even more than in the West, fashion codes who people are. If you're conversant with specific brands, it goes even further. I'll often approach girls by remarking on what they're wearing - in some cases (as with specific subcultures like visual-kei or circle-active gyaru), identifying the brands they're wearing also allows me to intuit with a high degree of certainty what their favorite bands are, what movies they watch, what their job most likely is, etc. Women enjoy being approached by men who already seem to know something about them. Not to mention all the time you can save by eliminating lame-ass questions ("Where did you buy this?" "What are your hobbies?" etc.)

2) Sleeping - I could also expand on this one for probably an hour or so. In particular I usually relate it to the tiredness felt by almost everyone who works in Japan. If a woman gave her hobby as sleeping I'd expand on the theme of relaxation and how the stresses of life and work can get us down. It's a great topic that almost everyone can relate to and vent some of their frustrations with.

3) Playing with her cat - I'd find out what age that cat is, what breed and how she plays with it. Has she been to one of those cat cafes? Is she more of a cat person than a dog person and what does that imply about her personality? Is she a general animal lover or not?

These are excellent elaborations and extrapolations (she worked in fashion retail and did love animals as it happens, although by her own account she did not wear much of the stuff she worked with). The example of course was based on a real girl I recently had a very nice date with, although she still tried to friendzone me even after kissing.

However, what you are describing are threads of conversation. Why is she interested in fashion? What does all her cat and smartphone play tell me about her as a person, and how I should be treating her? Is there a reason she was reduced to listing "eating and sleeping" as hobbies, or was she avoiding mentioning something? Maybe all this tells me nothing, and I should instead just observe her behaviour?

I'm having trouble translating that kind of information into insights into her as person, although of course it is pretty easy to translate them into conversational fodder.

Extract information from, yes... but understand her as a person, how? I don't buy into Marxist theory and the usual socio-biological rubric is often hokey, but in the absence of explicit verbalisation from the person herself or very obvious "interests", a framework for understanding a little more about the character of women who commonly have no perceptible interests, ambitions or career, and who define their identity largely in terms of consuming fashion goods and media, seems useful. And I mean in terms of guiding interactions with an individual, not observing the dynamics of a group. Presumably dealing with gyarus and other fashion tribes a great deal would give individuals such as yourselves great insight into this.

Edit: Adding a counterexample of a girl who was very easy (at least for me) to understand - she spent a year living overseas, came back to Japan with greatly expanded horizons and was unhappy with the prospect of continuing to operate within the confines of an insular mentality, and pursue her goals... since she was able to explicitly explain most of this it was very easy to relate our experiences. But most who are only semi-conscious of their own mental environment are not nearly as easy to understand in such terms.

 

[Wwanderer]

I can't imagine there are any things better than fashion, sleeping and cats.

Maybe a fashionable cat that is asleep!?

-Ww

 

[Dorian Gray]

However, what you are describing are threads of conversation. Why is she interested in fashion? What does all her cat and smartphone play tell me about her as a person, and how I should be treating her? Is there a reason she was reduced to listing "eating and sleeping" as hobbies, or was she avoiding mentioning something? Maybe all this tells me nothing, and I should instead just observe her behaviour?

There are definite answers to these questions, and while I can't give you them without meeting the woman in question, I can suggest ways in which you could arrive at them by talking to her, and then apply this to future interactions with other women too. You should congratulate yourself for asking the RIGHT questions here: the ones that start with why, what, how, etc. - in other words the ones likely to require specific information rather than generalizations. Anyway, to break it down a bit:

Foreign dudes in Japan often feel like they're hitting a brick wall when Japanese women give their interests as "watching TV," "Disney, "sleeping," "I don't know," etc. These answers can seem confounding, and it often leads to the dudes dismissing the women as being shallow, conformist, inscrutable, etc. But for the most part Japanese women aren't socialized to define themselves in terms of a hierarchy of tastes and interests (This is more stereotypically Western behavior - Pierre Bourdieu explains it well in his books). Japanese women are much more likely to think of themselves in terms of their family, friends, job, "being Japanese," etc. Where they're from also plays a large role - Osaka girls are usually quite different from Kyushu or Hokkaido girls. That's not to say they don't have strong interests and preferences, but the way they conceptualize them is different.

The point is that you have to dig through the seemingly meaningless or empty responses to find the why, what, how answers. This is a process I call "cutting deeper" - getting to the underlying emotional or personal motivations. For example, going on the admittedly limited information you've given about the retail worker girl who likes cats - I would begin by establishing a rough framework that looks something like this:

-Age?
-Background? Working class vs middle class?
-Education? Did she stop at high school and then immediately go into retail, or did she attend some kind of specialty school or university?
-What are her dreams and desires for the future?

Now, I wouldn't just BLUNTLY ASK her for this information, but would try to elicit it in the course of a normal conversation. Once I'd gotten the answers, I'd then use what I know about Japanese society to make targeted assumptions about what kinds of pressures and influences she's probably feeling at the moment. For example:

24 year old retail worker at the brand RIENDA. Didn't go to university. 25th birthday is coming up so becoming more conscious of her age!!! Getting older all the time and - no boyfriend at the moment? Does she want marriage and children as soon as possible? Retail worker so probably not on the office lady track. Probably depends on the influence of her friends to get some sense of what her future should be, let's ask her about them and see what they're like. The brand of store she works for - their demographic is mostly teenagers and women in their early 20s - might she feel that she's getting too old to work there much less wear their clothes and should she be adjusting her style to seem more 'adult' now? Does she live at home? If so, does she get along better with her father or her mother, and why? She said she lives with her parents but wants to move out - okay, looking for more freedom/sense of establishing herself - suggests receptivity to adventure and trying something new...

This is just a brief sample of what might run through my mind when talking to a complete stranger, or going on a date with someone I'd approached on the street. As you can see, it's a mixture of informed supposition that tends to throw up as many new questions as it answers (which lead to new avenues of conversation and exploration).

I don't buy into Marxist theory and the usual socio-biological rubric is often hokey, but in the absence of explicit verbalisation from the person herself or very obvious "interests", a framework for understanding a little more about the character of women who commonly have no perceptible interests, ambitions or career, and who define their identity largely in terms of consuming fashion goods and media, seems useful.

The main idea is working down from large-scale (socioeconomic status and background) to small-scale (individual women). Since Japan is a fairly homogenous society with a monolithic media complex, it's usually fairly easy to do this provided you have the right experience and information. I started out by analyzing lots of market research and reading Japanese fashion and lifestyle magazines, paying particular attention to the surveys and polls. From this I figured out what kinds of women tend to prefer what kinds of clothing styles on men, as well as what the various demographics wanted and desired in a partner and in their future lives. When combined with constant gaming and dating, I eventually worked up a fairly good understanding of different types of women in this country and how they think and feel.

Presumably dealing with gyarus and other fashion tribes a great deal would give individuals such as yourselves great insight into this.

More obviously extreme subcultures are easier to stereotype and deal with, but you can apply the same process to a single group like office ladies as well (for example, contrasting the pressures faced by first year office ladies vs those faced by ones who are approaching their 30s). Information and experience combined with your empathy usually allow you to adjust your approach for each different girl.

Edit: Adding a counterexample of a girl who was very easy (at least for me) to understand - she spent a year living overseas, came back to Japan with greatly expanded horizons and was unhappy with the prospect of continuing to operate within the confines of an insular mentality, and pursue her goals... since she was able to explicitly explain most of this it was very easy to relate our experiences. But most who are only semi-conscious of their own mental environment are not nearly as easy to understand in such terms.

Yeah, internationalized girls are usually pretty easy to deal with. I'm presuming you're approaching girls who don't speak any English, have never been abroad and aren't particularly interested in foreigners or foreign culture. To game them you have to demonstrate an ability to be "normal" (i.e. interact with them in a way they can relate to and doesn't seem inordinately different from that of cool Japanese dudes they've dated before) as well as the aforementioned understanding/empathy for their life circumstances and personality.

 

[Sinapse]

Scout is pretty amazing, but a lot of work if you look at how often pick up doesn't work.

I'd think of scout/catch as pretty different from nanpa actually. The method and outwards appearance is pretty much the same but the content and target audience is different. Notably, the guys go up with something directly related to the job - making it clear what they are looking for with something like

お金困ってますか？ (Are you short on money?) バイト探してますか? (are you looking for a part-time job?)

The kind of girls who they target and who stop will be often very different from the normal nanpa-shi. The scout or catch are looking for girls to work in a specific industry, and girls who are actually in dire straits or who are interested in such a job might stop and listen a bit more. This doesn't really entirely overlap with what nanpa-shi are looking for or who they get. A girl who is in no financial difficulty, or perhaps already IS a kyabajo, would not stop for a scout but might stop for a nanpa-shi if his game is tight.

The slimiest of the bunch is the AV / Idol spectrum.. which you never know how far in one direction they are. They basically sell girls a bunch of lies and get them to come in, get banged by the manager, either make porn or likely just get dumped back on the street. Perhaps a very small % end up being idols for a little bit (usually minor). They usually make statements about the girls physical appearance and how she "Has the look" or "The right face"... I guess it's not too distant from Hollywood "agent" types.


Typical (bad) nanpa-shi "openers", by comparison (combined with "sharking," or leaning in with the head and turning towards the girl and holding the hand in a slicing motion in front of them) are:

お帰りですか？ (Are you on your way home?)
お茶しませんか？ (How about some tea?)
一杯でも？ (One drink?)
一人ですか？ (Are you by yourself)

Note that these are by and away the most common, but they aren't really very effective for a lot of reasons. There are hordes of nanpa-shi who use these lines delivered like a little bullet before ducking out when ignored - to very minimal effect. By comparison, the actual good nanpa-shi and what @Dorian Gray learned from them and improved on that is now fundamental to Japan-game (paratactic monologuing, cutting deeper, targeted assumptions, etc) are wildly more effective. By and large the nanpa you see happening outside of stations is almost always the nanpa that sucks (leading to a belief that nanpa doesn't work). Good nanpa, by definition, is nearly invisible.

 

[Curacao]

How/why does paratactic monologue work?

 

[Ascent]

Foreign dudes in Japan often feel like they're hitting a brick wall when Japanese women give their interests as "watching TV," "Disney, "sleeping," "I don't know," etc. These answers can seem confounding, and it often leads to the dudes dismissing the women as being shallow, conformist, inscrutable, etc. But for the most part Japanese women aren't socialized to define themselves in terms of a hierarchy of tastes and interests (This is more stereotypically Western behavior - Pierre Bourdieu explains it well in his books). Japanese women are much more likely to think of themselves in terms of their family, friends, job, "being Japanese," etc. Where they're from also plays a large role - Osaka girls are usually quite different from Kyushu or Hokkaido girls. That's not to say they don't have strong interests and preferences, but the way they conceptualize them is different.

This is a very helpful insight - the notion of constructing an identity in terms of interests and consumption of course being an implicitly modern and western one. Although it still leaves the question of how best to understand someone from their family/friends/job/origin.

Since my motivation was finding ladies to share my time - rather than interests - with, it never really bothered me to hear the likes of "Disney, eating and sleeping" so often (I'd be more interested in how our personalities interact), but understanding the character of who I am interacting with in a more fundamental way from "Disney" would be a little difficult.

I'm presuming you're approaching girls who don't speak any English, have never been abroad and aren't particularly interested in foreigners or foreign culture. To game them you have to demonstrate an ability to be "normal" (i.e. interact with them in a way they can relate to and doesn't seem inordinately different from that of cool Japanese dudes they've dated before) as well as the aforementioned understanding/empathy for their life circumstances and personality.

Right, hardly any of those about, and no real assurance they will actually be interested. I don't really have any type of girl in mind as a target, although a certain "beggars can't be choosers" mentality is admittedly at play.

If anything, interest in English rather than actual internationalisation is probably a minor handicap as it makes it harder to make a more substantive connection beyond "I can learn English off this guy".

All that said, my own utter failure at meeting anyone using these methods seems to stem from approach related issues, and I don't think cultivating a connection with someone actually prepared to spend some time with me is quite such an issue for me.

お帰りですか？ (Are you on your way home?)
お茶しませんか？ (How about some tea?)
一杯でも？ (One drink?)
一人ですか？ (Are you by yourself)

Note that these are by and away the most common, but they aren't really very effective for a lot of reasons. There are hordes of nanpa-shi who use these lines delivered like a little bullet before ducking out when ignored - to very minimal effect. By comparison, the actual good nanpa-shi and what @Dorian Gray learned from them and improved on that is now fundamental to Japan-game (paratactic monologuing, cutting deeper, targeted assumptions, etc) are wildly more effective.

The stereotyped "nanpa" openers delivered that way and in that location are precisely the ones virtually any Japanese website dispensing advice on the topic seem to warn against, which leaves me wondering why anyone who can read keeps using them. Is there an element of ritual to this perhaps?

By and large the nanpa you see happening outside of stations is almost always the nanpa that sucks (leading to a belief that nanpa doesn't work). Good nanpa, by definition, is nearly invisible.

Their nanpa does suck, and nanpa certainly hasn't worked for me at all. There are credibility problems with what some of the people on here are coming out with, as far as I am concerned.

"Invisible" vs "not occurring" - I cannot recall witnessing any instance of a cold approach in any of the venues I have been in, and I have been observing intently at all times. If a guy goes up to a woman, it always transpires she was waiting for him or already knew him. If there were already there chatting, it's because they already knew one another.

 

[John Chavers]

How/why does paratactic monologue work?

 

[MossBoss]

Me luv you long time. 10 dollar.

 

[User#8628]

お茶しませんか？ (How about some tea?)

It's always the ojisan who use this pickup line :')

 

[Sinapse]

If anything, interest in English rather than actual internationalisation is probably a minor handicap as it makes it harder to make a more substantive connection beyond "I can learn English off this guy".

No it's not..

All that said, my own utter failure at meeting anyone using these methods seems to stem from approach related issues, and I don't think cultivating a connection with someone actually prepared to spend some time with me is quite such an issue for me.

...Cultivating a connection is how you get them to spend time with you... not the other way around

If a guy goes up to a woman, it always transpires she was waiting for him or already knew him. If there were already there chatting, it's because they already knew one another.

Most of the time yes they are strangers. But.. this is also almost exactly what really good pickup looks like.. so much so that you may have missed it.

There are credibility problems with what some of the people on here are coming out with, as far as I am concerned.

If you don't believe it works.. it affects nobody but you.. Pretty hard to effectively do something you don't believe in..

 

[Sinapse]

How/why does paratactic monologue work?

Without going too deep into it, basically it's changing the way in which you communicate so as to pack more ideas/assumptions/statements in a shorter amount of time. It works because it gives far more easy entries to conversation for her to take up, and is far more intriguing than most conversations or interactions she has had or will have with almost all people she meets.

 

[Ascent]

No it's not..
...Cultivating a connection is how you get them to spend time with you... not the other way around

You can't cultivate a connection with someone who won't meet or communicate with you.
Maybe you can start a connection or coax someone into feeling it would be worthwhile to form one in an initial encounter, but I was thinking in terms of the medium to long term, not a 10 minute conversation.

Most of the time yes they are strangers. But.. this is also almost exactly what really good pickup looks like.. so much so that you may have missed it.

Unfalsifiable.

It's easy to see it is not pickup. One party recognises the other, they are obviously already intimate or previously acquainted, etc.

"If you can't see pickup working it is because it is just because it is so good" and "if it doesn't work at all it is you and not the method" could both be abused as ways of sidestepping all scepticism it seems.

If you don't believe it works.. it affects nobody but you.. Pretty hard to effectively do something you don't believe in..

Believing I can fly won't make it so. The accounts you can read here and elsewhere don't ring true at all in terms of how they are represented, and this evaluation is based on solid personal experience.

 

[Sinapse]

The accounts you can read here and elsewhere don't ring true at all in terms of how they are represented

....and how are they represented exactly?

this evaluation is based on solid personal experience.

As is everything I write here.

 

[Manfreidi]

John as funny as you can be; it has to be said "why do you even frequent this subforum you obviously don't like its subject or its main users?".

I think it is extremely bad what you are doing. Is passive aggressive the right way to describe it?

 

[Sinapse]

John as funny as you can be; it has to be said "why do you even frequent this subforum you obviously don't like its subject or its main users?".

I think it is extremely bad what you are doing. Is passive aggressive the right way to describe it?

Just ignore him, he's harmless

...or use the off topic videos for movie recommendations!

 

[Chocoballs]

The main idea is working down from large-scale (socioeconomic status and background) to small-scale (individual women). Since Japan is a fairly homogenous society with a monolithic media complex, it's usually fairly easy to do this provided you have the right experience and information. I started out by analyzing lots of market research and reading Japanese fashion and lifestyle magazines, paying particular attention to the surveys and polls.

Interesting, I can see how easy it would be to relate with any woman if you have this knowledge. But how critical is this? I doubt there are many guys who want to read all this stuff just to meet women.

 

[User#8628]

I'd think of scout/catch as pretty different from nanpa actually. The method and outwards appearance is pretty much the same but the content and target audience is different. Notably, the guys go up with something directly related to the job - making it clear what they are looking for with something like

お金困ってますか？ (Are you short on money?) バイト探してますか? (are you looking for a part-time job?)

The kind of girls who they target and who stop will be often very different from the normal nanpa-shi. The scout or catch are looking for girls to work in a specific industry, and girls who are actually in dire straits or who are interested in such a job might stop and listen a bit more. This doesn't really entirely overlap with what nanpa-shi are looking for or who they get. A girl who is in no financial difficulty, or perhaps already IS a kyabajo, would not stop for a scout but might stop for a nanpa-shi if his game is tight.

The slimiest of the bunch is the AV / Idol spectrum.. which you never know how far in one direction they are. They basically sell girls a bunch of lies and get them to come in, get banged by the manager, either make porn or likely just get dumped back on the street. Perhaps a very small % end up being idols for a little bit (usually minor). They usually make statements about the girls physical appearance and how she "Has the look" or "The right face"... I guess it's not too distant from Hollywood "agent" types.


Typical (bad) nanpa-shi "openers", by comparison (combined with "sharking," or leaning in with the head and turning towards the girl and holding the hand in a slicing motion in front of them) are:

お帰りですか？ (Are you on your way home?)
お茶しませんか？ (How about some tea?)
一杯でも？ (One drink?)
一人ですか？ (Are you by yourself)

Note that these are by and away the most common, but they aren't really very effective for a lot of reasons. There are hordes of nanpa-shi who use these lines delivered like a little bullet before ducking out when ignored - to very minimal effect. By comparison, the actual good nanpa-shi and what @Dorian Gray learned from them and improved on that is now fundamental to Japan-game (paratactic monologuing, cutting deeper, targeted assumptions, etc) are wildly more effective. By and large the nanpa you see happening outside of stations is almost always the nanpa that sucks (leading to a belief that nanpa doesn't work). Good nanpa, by definition, is nearly invisible.

The way of pick up is probably different but they also date/have sex with the girls they talk to sometimes so double bonus.

 

[Ascent]

....and how are they represented exactly?

Depending on author, the depictions range from resembling little more than fictionalised conquest-bragging to drastically misrepresenting such practices with overstated levels of ease and success. Motivations might range from profit and self-aggrandisement to a simple confirmatory bias. I know my experiences, I've read very honest sounding accounts, and I know some of the typical styles they are depicted in PUA circles, and there are some big discrepancies.

 

[Solong]

Depending on author, the depictions range from resembling little more than fictionalised conquest-bragging to drastically misrepresenting such practices with overstated levels of ease and success. Motivations might range from profit and self-aggrandisement to a simple confirmatory bias. I know my experiences, I've read very honest sounding accounts, and I know some of the typical styles they are depicted in PUA circles, and there are some big discrepancies.

There are many guys who very successfully utilize PUA methods. It's a matter of developing the confidence, experience, and skill.

I had sex or new dates, every day since 1/1/16 and I'm booked until 1/14/16. Even to the extent, that I've had to cancel and reschedule with various ladies. I utilize the methodology, as I have stated here, and it works fantastically well.

Think of PUA like Martial Arts or MMA, you may have to stick with it and keep developing yourself, before you can claim being proficient or a master. At times it might be difficult or you can't seem to understand where you are messing up at, but over time you will become better and before you know it... can be really good at it.

And Ww knows exactly where this is at

 

[Ascent]

Solong, that is exactly the kind of post which gives me pause.

As a desperate last step to stop my personal life completely collapsing as a result of this experiment, I gave Tinder another try and in 2 days I have more dates lined up than I managed in the last 3 months failing at approaching (and all those came from bars and the like). The gulf between that, your accounts, and my results with pickup (endlessly being ghosted, shot down and even thrown out of a coffee house for asking a few girls questions about what books they were reading) is just too much to reconcile, even if you are kind enough to dig out some pics of a girl to illustrate your claim.