Since the most common question I get in my email is usually a poorly written grammatical catastrophe that tends to be along the lines of “How I get Japanese gurls fast?” I thought it was only appropriate to start with the topic of men dating Japanese women, as I rarely get the opposite “How I get Japanese boyz fast?” question. Now, in this post I won’t actually be telling you “how get Japanese gurls fast” (that secret disappeared with the Jomon, long ago), but I will be going over what it’s like to date a Japanese girl, in general, based on around fifty people who responded to a survey I put out a couple months ago. There will also be some information that was gleaned from one-on-one interviews I conducted with people as well as some personal insight.

Alright. Are you ready to put on your imagination goggles? You’re a dude, and finally (finally!) after the forty-sixth Japanese girl you’ve asked, one of them has sighed and then followed that *sigh* up with an “okay, fine. Just this once, okay?” It’s a date! Later that night you shine your “Dispel The Foreigners” kanji tattoo, put on your fanciest cosplay outfit, and get ready for your first date with a Japanese girl. But then you realize, just as you’re about to knock on her door ten minutes early (boo boo) that you have no idea what you can expect! Don’t worry, we’re here to help.

Keep in mind that a lot of statements are generalizations. All people are individuals that do their own things, so use the following information with caution. We are not responsible for causing any injury, death, or heartbreak, kk?

Getting The Girl

One thing in particular for non-Japanese guys compared to non-Japanese girls (dating Japanese guys) is that it seemed a lot easier for the dude to find someone willing to date them. If you just open your eyes and look around Japan you’ll see this statement in action. Even outside of Japan this holds true. How many couples are there with non-Japanese guys and Japanese girls? Okay, now how many Japanese guys with non-Japanese girls do you see? Probably not as many. Perhaps none at all. Part of this could certainly be due to the fact that Japanese girls are more open than Japanese guys to the idea of dating non-Japanese people. Whatever it is, if you’re a guy you’re going to have a much easier time meeting and then dating Japanese people.

As you might expect as well, a lot of men met their significant other via some kind of English-related activity, whether it was English school, some kind of English practice circle, or even a girl just wanting to practice English on a train. Not looking Japanese has its perks in this case.

We met at a 合コン, essentially. It was a dinner for girls who wanted to learn English through my company. -anonymous

I met her at a Japanese/English language exchange event in my city.  -ぺんぺん

I was an English teacher in Japan for a few years, then when I returned home to Canada, I wanted to keep up my Japanese language skills, so I joined a Japanese-English Language Exchange program at a local university. One day the group was sitting in a circle, and there were cute Japanese girls on either side of me. I made a quick decision that I wanted to talk to the girl on my right, so when they said to start talking, I turned towards her, introduced myself, and the rest is history.  -James

Second girl introduced herself to me, in flawless English, on the train from Tokyo to Mito one night. -Dale

That being said, a lot of non-Japanese people go to Japan to teach English, so of course there’s going to be a lot of English-teaching-related relationships going on. Maybe teaching English / speaking English has nothing to do with finding someone. Maybe most non-Japanese people are doing English-related things already, so of course this story comes up more often! That’s definitely possible, but I wouldn’t know unless I talked to more Japanese girls dating non-Japanese guys about it. But, there were some other “first meeting” places mentioned a decent amount as well. “At a bar” and “online” came up fairly often, so if  English isn’t really your thing then those two alternatives exist as well. Though, “English” does come up later in the “communication” section of this article, so perhaps there is something to it?

Expectations Of The Man

We’ll talk more about this a lot more in the “What It’s Like To Date A Japanese Guy” post since I think that perspective is more interesting here, but let’s take a quick look at what you, the dude, is expected to do.

First of all, you’re going to be paying for everything… that is, except purikura (actually part of a story I’ll put in the opposite version of this article), because girls can pay for that on their own. If you go out on a date for dinner, be prepared to pay for the food. No splitting the bills or BS like that, because you’re the guy and you’re going to pay. Of course, there’s exceptions to this “rule” and there will be girls out there willing and asking to pay for date-related things, but that’s not the norm.

That being said, if you end up living together or visiting her home, you won’t be expected to do any of the housework or cooking. There were a couple exceptions to the cooking rule (where the guy really loved cooking and insisted on cooking), but for the most part it’s expected that you’re going to let them do all of that.

There will also be some interesting cultural differences, depending on where you’re from. Expect more gift-giving to happen from girls. This is one thing that seemed to pop up in the surveys that surprised people a lot, for some reason. Japan is a very gift-giving culture so it makes sense, but just be sure to be ready for it. My favorite quote has nothing to do with gift giving, however, and has to do with going on a movie-date.

[W]e were on a movie date and she refused to let me hold the popcorn bag. She actually held it there for me for over 2 hours. Also, she has given me several little gifts pretty early on. Typically I wouldn’t expect that here. -ぺんぺん

The expectations of “what a guy is supposed to do” and “what a girl is supposed to do” are going to be different from culture to culture. I don’t want to spoil too much from the girl’s perspective article though, so I’m going to stop here. But, the above should give you an idea of where to start at least, should you find yourself in the position of dating a Japanese girl.

Showing Affection

Affection and how you show it tends to be a bigger topic on the “girls dating Japanese guys” side of things, but we’ll go over some of the bigger points here (and you’ll have to wait for more of the stories and such in the next article).

In general, Japanese people don’t show as much affection towards each other in public (or in private, for that matter) compared to Western couples. This surprises a lot of people at first. There’s a lack of hand holding, hugging, kissing, and so on in public places. Some people even complained that “the first kiss” happens way later than you’d expect, though others said that sex tends to happen sooner than they expect. I suppose both of those statements could be true at the same time, though.

There were some Japanese girl perspectives in the survey I ran and thankfully a couple of them talked about this topic as well as the topic of physical affection.

It’s more important to understand each other than it is to show how much I love someone through touching. -anonymous

Sometimes it’s nice when thoughts are difficult to understand. It adds some mystery to the relationship. -anonymous

Less physical contact makes physical contact more special when it happens. If you always touch each other, then it’s not special anymore when you do. -ち

In Western relationships you’re expected to show physical affection in private and in public. It’s how you show you love someone, right? In Japan that’s not the way you do it and “understanding of the other person” becomes more important. This was also brought up a lot in terms of non-physical affection. One complaint I saw a lot was that non-Japanese guys had trouble knowing what the girl was thinking and feeling. It’s certainly the Japanese way to not come out and directly say how you’re feeling about something, so this has caused a few problems in respondents’ relationships.

In Japan, you’re expected to be able to read and understand people and how they’re feeling, even though they’re not showing it or telling you. That being said, Japanese people spend their entire lives learning how to do this whereas in the West we tend to just say what’s on our mind so this “skill” never really develops. A lot of people in the surveys thought their girlfriend was being cold to them, but in reality they were just being normal and the guy was expected to know what was going on. Or, when the girl was upset about something she wouldn’t really say it, and it would become a problem when the guy didn’t realize. It’s safe to say that you should pay extra close attention to noticing cues she may send out. If you miss them you may not think it’s a big deal, but after a while she will think you’re selfish and mean. Communicating and talking about this issue has also proven helpful to some.

Meeting Her Family

“Meeting the family” seemed to be one of the things that a lot of people were initially nervous about then figured out that it wasn’t so big of a deal. Most families are nice, accepting, and won’t try to kill you in your sleep because you’re dating their precious Japanese daughter. Almost everyone had a great experience meeting the family… that is except for one respondent, who has an awesome story. Keep in mind, this is probably not the norm. Also note that this Japanese girl also grew up partially in Japan and partially in LA (will make more sense as you read it):

Mom loved me, and even told me I was chotto sekushi sugi, with a frighteningly lecherous wink. Dad was old school Nipponjin and hated my guts. At oshogatsu time, my girlfriend invited me over – I was off work with not much going on, so I suppose she didn’t want me to feel lonely (or call any of her friends back). New Year’s Eve day, and of course their cleaning the house, for company the next day. I didn’t understand oshogatsu protocol very well, and didnt think this was a big deal. I wanted to help clean, but of course they wouldn’t hear of it, and sat me down in in front of the TV while they worked. In retrospect, I see how,this,was tough – manners dictated they treat me like a guest, but at the same time they wanted/needed to do the family house clean. I was just getting into watching The Highlander without subtitles when I heard a row starting in the kitchen through the shoji that separated it from the room I was in. My girlfriend was defending my being there, and Dad was berating her for bringing an Ameko (yes, he used that word) into their house on such a family day. At this point, i asked mom if i should leave. she assured me in very polite Japanese that it was ok to stay. Girlfriend stomped off from dad into the room I was in. Dad followed her very mad at this point telling her how a respectful Japanese daughter should never walk away from her elder when she was being talked to, and he slapped her face. Like any young woman who had reached maturity in L.A., and very unlike a respectful Japanese girl, girlfriend acted out of reflex when she was slapped and kneed him hard in the royal regalia. He went down like a ton of bricks. At this point mom leaned over, and still in very polite Japanese, suggested that now might be a good time to leave, after all. About 30 minutes later, girlfriend rode her bike over to my apartment with 20,000 yen her mom had given her, and we partied for the next couple days with mom’s blessing. -Dale

Despite the story above, this seems to be one of the things you least have to worry about. In fact, there seemed to be more problems with the Western parents, because usually they were afraid their child would never come home again after marrying a Japanese girl (sometimes they were correct in this assumption).

Communication?

Another topic that I thought might come up more but didn’t actually pose much of a problem was the issue of “communication.” Despite having two separate native languages, respondents communicated well with their significant others. I have a couple theories on this.

One involves an idea brought up earlier in the article in the “affection” section. Communication is often unspoken in Japanese culture (not due to bionic implants, sadly) and you’re supposed to read the other person to know how they’re feeling and to know what they want. Perhaps those who have had longer and more successful relationships realized this earlier. Or perhaps the Japanese significant other met the non-Japanese partner half way (in being more direct).

The other theory involves English. Of course, the non-Japanese person often learned quite a bit of Japanese, and that helps too. But, since so many of the “meetings” of these couples had to do with English (school, meetups, practice-attempts, etc) it is safe to assume that the Japanese girl had an interest in English already which means they would be more likely to learn English well  compared to regular Japanese girls. Same usually goes for the non-Western guy (with Japanese), which means they learn each others’ languages pretty well.

One story in regards to using Japanese/English in their relationship really stood out to me.

My wife and I used to use Japanese when we argued , because it’s more polite than English. The worst insults are rather silly: “your mother has a protruding belly button,” that sort of thing. We used to argue a lot, and it kept my Japanese language skills sharp. But after 26 years, we hardly ever argue anymore. So my Japanese language skills are fading. -Ira

It’s funny because it’s true. The Japanese language is inherently set up to be more polite. I wish I could have seen their arguments.

So like “meeting the family” I think there’s less here to worry about than most people might think. Communication can occasionally be an issue, but usually like-minded people will find a way past any problems and make it work without issue. If you’re not meant to be with each other then sure, maybe communication could hurt the relationship. But, if you’re good together then the issue of “communication” will hardly make a drop in the bucket. If that doesn’t happen, though, I guess we can look forward to a future of bionic brain implants.

—

I hope you enjoyed this post. Also, please no more “Can I haz Japanese girl?” emails, please.

Next up (Friday), Mami is going to take us through some of her experience, being a Japanese girl who married a non-Japanese guy. Please be sure to look forward to that article if you enjoyed this one. I’ve skimmed it already and it’s really interesting!

Many people even say that “the best way to learn a language is to date someone who speaks it!”  Sorry, but for the sake of your Japanese language skills

Flirting DOESN’T CUT IT!

I assure you, the longer you date a Japanese girl, the less likely you will be able read the rude t-shirt you started wearing to find one!  Why you might ask?  It only makes sense that the more you speak Japanese, the better you get, right? Right?  RIGHT?!

Wrong, and here’s why:

1.  You are lazy

Sure.  At first you might say, “Oh man, I’m going to get so good at kanji, and grammar, and all that stuff now!” and you might even convince your girlfriend to tutor you everyday, but that won’t last. It NEVER does. There are exceptions to the rule, but most of the time you’ve got a lot more “fun and important” things to do with your girlfriend than talk about freaking kanji radicals and grammar points (…at least I HOPE you do).  You’ll also have a lot more “unfun” things to talk about like when her mom is coming to visit or how bad you made the bathroom smell.  In any case, there will be times when you’ll get lazy and just use the easiest words you can think of, even if it’s just English that sounds kind of like Japanese.

2.  You will mix English and Japanese

There are lots of terms for this phenomenon, and it is not limited to just speakers of English and Japanese, but it is the DEVIL!!! This stupid practice, mostly caused by laziness will literally ruin your chances of speaking intelligible Japanese, and probably your girlfriend’s chances of remembering English.  You will create your own little language that no one else really understands, not even you, and that makes for absolutely terrible communication.

Here is a sample conversation that doesn’t make sense:

A.  When do you think the 図書館 is open?

B.  さあ、I don’t know, after dinner you should チェック。

A.  めんどくさいな。

B.  Don’t be a バカ。ほら見て、このサイトで it’s written right here!

A.   そうか。Fine, 夕飯を食べたら I’m gonna go return these 本。

See?  This conversation is wrong in too many ways to  “counto.”

3.  Getting made fun of sucks

No matter how good at speaking Japanese you get, there will always be ways to get made fun of by your girlfriend.  Some are simply called “cute” for speaking with an accent, while others get called out on their weird grammar or pronunciation.  No matter what, most guys HATE criticism, even backhanded statements about how cute you are!  It makes you feel stupid, like you are being treated like a small child, and it’s easy to get defensive.  Even people who speak really awesome Japanese get made fun of because they speak better Japanese than normal people!  It’s frustrating!  It’s only fair though, because I’m sure not many of you can honestly say you’ve never made fun of Japanese English or “カタカナ イングリーシュ.”  It’s just so cute and funny.  アイ　ライク　ユウー！カン　ウイ　ハング　アウト　ツモーロ？ “I like you!  Can we hang out tomorrow?” Awwwwwww….okay, fair is fair.

4.  あんたの彼女とばかり話してると、かわいい女の子みたいに話しちゃうわよ！笑

This title means, if you talk with your girlfriend all the time, you might end up sounding like our friend above:

「あたし美しいね〜!」”I’m sooo beautiful!” (said very cutely)

This is probably not desirable, and believe me, everyone will let you know how girly you sound.  This unfortunate scenario also occurs a lot because a huge portion of Japanese instructors are women, and most foreign guys don’t spend their time looking for manly sounding Japanese dudes to chase around.  If you are just starting your language learning experience, you won’t be able to help but talk like girl.  On the flip side, if you over compensate, and try to talk like a Japanese THUG, then your friends, girlfriend, their friends friends, will think you’ve lost your mind and will all laugh until they turn blue.

5.  Your girlfriend wants to learn English

I know Koichi hates this with a passion, but most guys learning Japanese are going to try to get girlfriends in Japan by becoming language partners.  Sorry Koichi, but it’s the birds and the bees, and it’s the way it will always be.  Men, chances are your future girlfriend isn’t going to date you because she’s really pumped about teaching someone basic Japanese over and over again.  If anything, she’ll agree to hang out with you because she wants to learn English, at least as one of the perks.  If that is the case, you will probably spend a lot more time explaining things in English rather than learning Japanese.

6.  No keigo or kanji with your girlfriend

Maybe I have exaggerated a smidge in the above parts, and there are significant linguistic improvements that can be made in your life by chasing Japanese girls.  Keigo (formal language) and Kanji skills are probably not included in this theoretical list of benefits.  Unless you want your conversations with your girlfriend to sound like two bankers who aren’t quite sure which of them is 先輩「せんぱい」 “senior,” you won’t be getting a lot of time practicing keigo.  Even Japanese people have trouble learning keigo because no one uses it with anyone close to them.  Using keigo with people you like makes you sound like you are being especially cold and probably mad at them.  It’s like when your parents were driving the car on a road trip when you were a little kid, and your dad is super lost and your mom asks overly kindly “Honey, would it be at all possible if we could stop and ask for directions?” to which your dad replies very politely and forcefully restrained “Darling, if we can just find the freeway, there will be no need to stop and bother the gas station attendant…”  It’s a little different in Japanese, but it’s the same concept that something isn’t right if you’re suddenly being very formal.  It sounds weird to the point where a lot of girls really don’t like to practice it with their boyfriends.  Sorry guys.

For kanji, unless your girlfriend is really into calligraphy and wants to practice together everyday, she probably won’t be a big resource for helping you there.  Some people try to hand write letters, but most would rather be doing other things, like eating nachos.  A popular solution is email, but I can assure you, everyone can type a ZILLION more kanji than they can actually write!  You, me, and most Japanese people under 30 included.  Now there’s even 191 more kanji we’re all supposed to know…so better start writing some really complex love letters!

7.  Jesus that’s fast! Can’t you speak slowly?!  Oh wait…you are?

It may seem like your girlfriend is talking like a machine gun to you, but wait until she gets around her friends…it’s a blur of giggling lightning!  For a lot of us, the only real part we participate in once they get going is listening to how silly or cute we sound if we try to say anything.  That means that most of the time she’s going easy on you.  It’s nice and practical for mutual understanding, but really it’s like using training wheels all the time.  Once you take them off, you’ll crash and burn in real conversations.  An obvious solution is to tell her to speak normally to you, but that often doesn’t last long.  If she tells you at lightning speed to “Bring the chopsticks” はしを持って来てね 「hashiwomottekitene」and you hear “Go to the bridge and back” 橋に行って来てね「hashiniittekitene」she’s probably going to get tired of you fast if you’re gone for an hour while she’s waiting for chopsticks!

橋だろ？！

8.  Your conversation topics will be limited

Some of you might be dating Japanese bioethics experts who take time and care to explain each vocabulary to you to ensure that you understand every word, but most of you will be repeating the following conversation far more often:

A.  今日何食べよう？「kyounanitabeyou?」”What should we eat today?”

B.  さあ、なにがいい？ 「saa, nanigaii?」”Uhh, well what do you want?”

A.  分からない。冷蔵庫に何が入っている？「wakaranai. reizokoninanigahaitteiru?」”I don’t know.  What’s in the fridge?”

B.  あまり何もないよ。「amarinanimonaiyo」”There’s not much.”

On the edge of your seat yet??  It’s like repeating basic Japanese class over and over again.  Some of you will get to delve into deeper topics from time to time, but it’s not like you’re going to be seriously practicing Japanese all the time with every conversation.  It gets tiring to have real deep conversations all the time, so it’s really easy to be lazy and stick to the mundane stuff, and mix in some English when you don’t know the right word and hope she understands.  BAD BAD BAD!

9.  Your girlfriend probably doesn’t know Japanese very well

I hate to criticize your girlfriend without having met her, but her Japanese is probably not perfect.  Unless she’s used to teaching foreigners all the time, it’s likely that she won’t be able to tell you much about how to learn Japanese.  She learned it a loooong time ago, and way differently than you’re going to have to do.  It’s not going to help you that much to go sit in on an elementary school Japanese language class in Japan.  Too much worrying about protecting your anus from mean children to focus anyway.

The Japanese your girlfriend uses isn’t even exactly the same thing you’ll be learning.  Her kanji’s probably off some of the time, and the grammar she uses sometimes won’t be found in your textbook.  That’s okay for basic practice, and it’s great to learn theoretical and practical use of Japanese, but this isn’t Japanese class it’s your GIRLFRIEND.

10.  Just kidding.

Getting a Japanese girlfriend really can improve your Japanese.  A lot.  Please don’t run away from Japanese girls screaming that you need to protect your language skills.  Please.  A lot of them are nice, fun, and might actually speak to you in Japanese.  If you practice with real people, then maybe you won’t sound like a conversation from Nakama or Genki, which will make people laugh way more than if you actually try.  Hopefully you’ll learn lots of cool things about culture, dating style, a new world view, and if you’re lucky, find more meaningful things to talk about than kanji radicals.  Just keep in mind the frustrations and pitfalls along the road, don’t give up, and don’t stop actually studying.  みんな頑張れ！

P.S. All this probably applies to Japanese boyfriends, too, for all of you that like boys and not girls.

This post was written by Nick W., who has traveled throughout many regions of Japan in search of unique cultural gems.  He is currently earning his MBA and has researched topics like folk music in WWII Japan and Ainu cultural revival through music.  His favorite Japanese musician is the late Nujabes.  He does have a nice Japanese girlfriend, but is too lazy to learn much Japanese from her.

I just read a great article by awesome j-blog WhatJapanThinks, which translates Japanese surveys into English for your enjoyment. This particular article is titled “How Japanese Call Their Partners.” i.e., what Japanese guys and gals call their significant others. I thought it was a particularly interesting study, and since what you call someone says a lot about someone in Japanese (There’s a lesson about this on TextFugu, if you’re a member), but this article goes deeper into one particular niche… the girlfriend / boyfriend. Oh baby oh baby.

Survey Results

Although you can read about the entire survey here, here are the most important bits of information for this particular article. Data was collected by iShare, and translated by WhatJapanThinks.

★ How do you most often refer to your partner? (Sample size=383)

*Most Common nicknames were those with -tan or -nyan added to the end of names

★ How does your partner most often refer to you? (Sample size=383)

*Most Common nicknames were those with -tan or -nyan added to the end of names

★ If you were to be called a name by a partner, which would you most want to be called? (Sample size=484)

Now, this data that was collected consisted of 289 males, and 195 females, which means the “All” percentages will tend to lean toward the male point of view, and this is what I want to focus on, especially with my special interest in male / female speech patterns (which I wrote about in the Japan Times in 2009). Let’s take a look at the top results, broken down by male/female from each data-set, and compare.

How do you refer to your partner?

• Men: Given Name Only (i.e. first name without -kun, -san, -chan, etc., name enders). 36%
• Women: Given Name plus -chan, -kun. 30.4%

In this data block, it’s interesting to see that the largest group of men who took the survey refer to their girlfriends without using name-enders like -kun, -chan, etc., whereas women response shows that their largets percentage block do call their boyfriends by name + chan / kun. Let’s keep this in mind while we move on to the next data-set.

How does your partner refer to you?

• Men: Given name plus chan, kun. 34.7%
• Women: Given name only. 34.2%

Of course, the opposite of the first dataset should be true, and that’s reflected here. Men are referred to by their name + chan / kun, and women are referred to by their given name only. This helps to validate the above data set even further.

What would you like to be called most?

• Men: Given name plus chan, kun. 27%
• Women: Given name only. 39.5%

This is the most interesting table, I think. Although it was fairly split up amongst men (#1 was given name + chan / kun, but there was a close second, which was “given name only”), the women pretty much only had one answer that really stood out, which was “given name only.” I find it really interesting that women are most interested in being called by their given name only, though they are more often calling their significant others by given name + chan / kun.

Although I have very little real data to back this up, I think there are some interesting hypothesis that can be.. er… hypothesized from this.

1. This is part of the whole “women must talk like women” thing… i.e. more polite, more submissive, etc. Even though kun / chan aren’t necessarily considered to be “polite” in the purest sense (nothing wrong with using these on your significant other, though), it is considered more “polite” than just doing given name without adding an honorific to the end.
2. Since “given name only” was a close second for men (26.3% versus 27%), and the top spot for “what would you like to be called most” when you add male/female responses together, this could be showing a change in the Japanese language towards a more Western style of language (i.e. just calling people by their first names, at least in casual situations). I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the Japanese language does change very quickly, and this could be one of those changes. People surveyed in this study were between the ages of 20-50, which, overall, is pretty young, and could represent a more “modern” generation that is making various changes to the language. It’s hard to look at this data and get too much more out of it without looking at the age groups individually, and then getting more results per age group.
3. Everyone actually calls each other “snuggy-bottoms” and just don’t want to admit it.

What insight can you pull from the survey data? Personally, I’m not all that good with numbers / statistics unless it involves baseball, so I’m sure I’m missing something, and would love to hear what you think, even if it’s something like “Koichi, you’re full of #$!@.”

What Should You Call YOUR Japanese Sweetheart?

If, by chance, you had a Japanese boyfriend or girlfriend, and you didn’t want to call them Snuggy-bottoms, I’d stick with the given name + kun / chan. It’s safe, it works, and there’s nothing wrong with it. The four “main” ways to do it are:

1. Given name only
2. Given name plus kun, chan
3. Nickname (i.e. snuggy bottoms)
4. Given name plus -san

Everything else drops way off there, and seem kind of weird. I feel sad for the 1-2% of people who are just called “you” or “Hey” or “Oy!” … unless their name is actually “you” or “hey” or “oy,” then I guess it’s okay.

Oh, and before you go, you should follow me on Twitter.