When I moved to Japan about five years ago, I quickly realized that finding love in this country was not going to be an easy task. By Sara Who Apr 17, 4 min read Most western men I met were either gay, in a relationship or only interested in Japanese women. I did find Japanese guys very attractive, but they would never approach me, being notoriously shy around foreign women. I could sometimes detect a flicker of interest, at most, before they ran away. The courtship process in Japan puzzled me.
From what I gathered from my Japanese girlfriends, it seemed to involve a lot of passiveness, indirect communication, text messaging, misunderstandings and patience. After wasting months subtly pursuing a guy at work only to discover he had a girlfriend, I quit the Japanese way β and bento making, also described by my friends as a boyfriend magnet in Japan.
I was new to the online dating scene and a little hesitant at first. After a particularly gloomy weekend, I decided that some no strings attached action sounded a lot better than no action at all.
I joined Japan Cupid, a dating website and started combing through profiles of creeps, charisma men and thankfully, potentially interesting Japanese guys. To my surprise, I got a lot of attention, especially from the ever so shy and elusive Japanese guys.
Hidden behind their computer screens, they could now safely approach me. Most were also pretty international, could speak English and were looking for a chance to meet non-Japanese people.
