The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I haven't been to a club in about two decades. Women do ignore, or feign ignoring, but that's not necessarily real ignoring. A guy who dresses well, is reasonably fit, and doesn't have particularly odd mannerisms or something weird that would put someone off can talk to almost anyone. Of course some degree of Japanese proficiency helps, but it isn't essential (though this obviously will depend on the woman.) The first women I spent any time with here spoke next to no English and we communicated by passing across the table one of those electronic dictionaries (now replaced by phones.)
How would I do it, well I once went to a bar and saw two tables: One full of young guys sitting chatting with each other, the other full of young attractive women doing the same. Unwilling to let this stand, I walked over, first introduced myself to the women, started chatting, got some of their names, then turned, without walking anywhere, and talked to the guys, got their names, and then did the obvious and introduced the two tables. Before I was done with my evening they had all bounced as a group elsewhere. Sometimes all anyone needs is an introduction, and I'm not bad at facilitating that kind of thing. Although it helps if you yourself are a fun person, or at least not paralyzed by social interaction (though even that needn't be a dealbreaker). And of course it helps if you are at a place that is essentially a meat market, and it's past last train.
I don't know OP's age, obviously, and I imagine I am probably twice that. It doesn't matter that much. There is an age between graduating university and beginning a job when Japanese women are looking to asobu (play, hang out, party) and not necessarily searching for soulmates or marriage partners--due to the uncertainty of their career trajectories meeting Mr. Very Possibly would be an unwelcome complication. They want to be wild a bit before joining society. At this time such women are open to much, in particular if they live in Osaka but are about to go work in Tokyo or somewhere else far afield. (This is just my experience. I have been out of the game for some time as an active player.)
When were you in Osaka? I agree that since the end of the COVID era, coupled with the weak yen, some places (Namba, in particular) are, as you say, overrun by foreign tourists (many Chinese and Koreans, but bars usually by westerners). Some bars more than most, of course. I do go to Namba from time to time but only with locals.
Shinsaibashi is largely the same, depending on how deep you go down the side streets. Generally Umeda contains more Japanese in the 20-30 something realm than foreigners, and there are bars there that I used to frequent. I think maybe as a married man there is the possibility that I have gained a certain confidence that I did not have when there seemed to be more at stake, and thus I do not have the paralyzing nervousness that many single men have.
I am not a pimp even in the metaphorical sense but I don't think a guy with tens of thousands in pocket money would have any trouble getting laid, and not just by a call-girl but by a normal(ish) woman. I could be wrong.
I will say that unless we're talking SkookumTree levels of self-loathing (and, if his self-descriptions are to believed, unattractiveness) there shouldn't be any great problem.
Is this too vague? Probably. I don't actually have a plan mapped out; I just sense this is not a great conundrum.
Thank you for being a positive externality to the world. If only more people were like you.
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Yeah... I don't want to argue with you, since it seems like you've lived there a long time while I was only there a few months. But I was just recently there, and went to all the places you mentioned. Lots of great places to go drinking with the bros, but very few places were any good for meeting women. They seemed to be well aware of what a hot commodity they were, as any young woman could sit in a touristy bar and get swarmed with attention, or open up a dating app and get hundreds of likes, or walk down the street and get hit on/scouted for the adult industry. A lot of the local guys, also, seemed quite handsome and smooth, so there's a high level of competition. If you "open up a conversation" between groups like you described, then you better be fluent enough to keep up with their conversation, which is quite hard when they're drinking and joking around. Unless it's a bar/event specifically targeted at foreigners, but then those were all 90%+ men.
I feel like I heard a lot of stories from guys like you who went there in the 90s and 2000s and had an easy time dating back then. But it's not like that anymore... their aging population has a lot fewer young women, while their culture cachet has increased and America's has decreased so noone is going to be impressed by a random foreigner guy showing up and fumbling with a dictionary or a translation app. I'm sure it's still possible to meet people, either to hook up or start a long-term relationship, but it's not at all an easy game. And this is despite me being frequently complimented on both my appearance and personality.
I don't necessarily say it's easy. It requires a bit of effort, even good fortune, as well as timing, and yes, game. My incredulity is mainly directed at the "I'm willing to spend $50,000 in an evening." That blows my mind. And I suspect if this weren't hyperbole and he did spend, say, a tenth of that much, and did meet a woman and did have sex, he'd regret having gone to such financial lengths.
To put it another way: There's no reason it has to be that hard. (Pun accidental but I'm leaving it )
well yeah I agree that spending $50,000 in an evening is insane. I don't even think it would help. Like, unless you want to meet a working girl, a normal woman would also think spending that much on club service is insane.
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