Country roads take me home
It's always nice to start things off by establishing a bit of setting. My position is in a very rural city. We are talking hardcore countryside. (Now I'm picturing the locals wearing leather and chains while walking around with their thumbs up going "ehhhhh". Since when was hardcore defined by The Fonz? What's wrong with my brain? Oops that would be another tangent.) The population of my city is 33,000, which doesn't sound too bad except we are the largest city by leaps and bounds in a two-hour radius.
Rural towns and cities in Japan are beautiful, peaceful, traditional, friendly, and dying. Young adults go to the big cities for college (Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, etc) and very few ever look back. This leaves most towns with a population consisting mainly of young children and the elderly. The last time I checked the population growth wars the elderly were kicking major school children butt. If I happen to see a guy that looks about my age he is either in high school (may be cute, but I'm not going there), or he is in his late 30s with a wife and two kids (also going to have to pass on that).
I love where I live, but it doesn't provide me with the choicest options. Internet dating and websites seem to be the way to go. That is unless you're my friend R who manages to drive 3 hours one way every weekend to Osaka and club hop. That boy has a mystic power all his own. The other dating bloggers, who I am secretly jealous of and adore by the way, seem to pick up a lot of dates on Internet sites like match.com and eharmony. What's a girl to do in Japan?
There are a few options I've discovered so far. I already mentioned Asoboo! in an earlier post. There is also a good pen-pal forum on Japan Guide. In their rules they say you can not use the ad listings to look for a date, but that seems to be what at least 75% of the ads are doing either covertly or openly. I posted an ad to find people who wanted to trade English practice for Japanese and I ended up with a 90% male response. People should go into this site looking for friends and you might make a connection, or new friends are good too! For people with decent Japanese a lot of people use the chat and message boards on Yahoo! Japan. Yahoo! was able to get a good foothold in Japan before other similar companies, so it is well used. I need to hunt more of my friends down for ideas.
I swear the next post will actually have something to do with an actual date...
Rural towns and cities in Japan are beautiful, peaceful, traditional, friendly, and dying. Young adults go to the big cities for college (Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, etc) and very few ever look back. This leaves most towns with a population consisting mainly of young children and the elderly. The last time I checked the population growth wars the elderly were kicking major school children butt. If I happen to see a guy that looks about my age he is either in high school (may be cute, but I'm not going there), or he is in his late 30s with a wife and two kids (also going to have to pass on that).
I love where I live, but it doesn't provide me with the choicest options. Internet dating and websites seem to be the way to go. That is unless you're my friend R who manages to drive 3 hours one way every weekend to Osaka and club hop. That boy has a mystic power all his own. The other dating bloggers, who I am secretly jealous of and adore by the way, seem to pick up a lot of dates on Internet sites like match.com and eharmony. What's a girl to do in Japan?
There are a few options I've discovered so far. I already mentioned Asoboo! in an earlier post. There is also a good pen-pal forum on Japan Guide. In their rules they say you can not use the ad listings to look for a date, but that seems to be what at least 75% of the ads are doing either covertly or openly. I posted an ad to find people who wanted to trade English practice for Japanese and I ended up with a 90% male response. People should go into this site looking for friends and you might make a connection, or new friends are good too! For people with decent Japanese a lot of people use the chat and message boards on Yahoo! Japan. Yahoo! was able to get a good foothold in Japan before other similar companies, so it is well used. I need to hunt more of my friends down for ideas.
I swear the next post will actually have something to do with an actual date...
posted by ldp at 2:31 PM
4 Comments:
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Hey, you're doing great.
It's true that I've generated a lot of dates online, but very few good, interesting or happy dates.
Do what I'm so bad at and be patient. It will happen. :)
Jamy - Thanks for the kind comments! I love your blog. It's one of the best written I've come across.
Gotta keep at it :)
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