My writing career began in December 1998 with this piece in the monthly English-language features and listing magazine, Kansai Time Out. At the time, there was also a weekly free, A5, black-and-white, classified ads paper, Kansai Flea Market. It listed jobs, accommodation, articles for sale etc. and had a very popular personal ads section. A frequently appearing ad said: I look like Tom Cruise and want to teach you English.
I called some ads, then placed my own, and the following, my first piece of published writing, appeared in Kansai Time Out, in December 1998.
Lover Wanted!
Simon Moran gets personal
‘Attractive JF (23) is looking for native English speaker. Let’s have fun together!’
‘Discreet Englishman seeks sexually active Japanese lady to pamper. Any age/size OK.’
Perusing the personal columns in Kansai’s best-known free advertising rag would seem enough to tempt anyone. I was once told of someone who had surrendered to the temptation and placed an advert. The response had been outstanding. ‘He’s bedded six of them, been given a gold necklace and watch and he has to unplug the phone to get any peace at night.’
Perhaps you don’t need any new accessories, glittering or otherwise, but you must have seen the ads and wondered just what kind of people place them, why, and most importantly of all, do they work?
People are after different things, many of which are innocent enough: language or cultural exchange, pen friends, cooking partners and the like. Some are specialised: ‘Pregnant woman needs baby stuff’, ‘Want to play Frisbee?’ Others tend to the obscure: ‘2 JF 19yrs old, seek foreign gay friends, AC/DC, gay couples OK. No romance please.’
No matter the language – French, Spanish, Japanese or like the majority written in English – some reasons are obvious. Find any of the following words or phrases – active, discreet, cute, open-minded, slim, of legal age, married or single OK, or sex-friend – and you know the advertiser’s intention is something other than pronunciation practice.
Of those who use the ads, Tom, 31, of New Zealand airs a common complaint, ‘It’s in my contract that I can’t date my students, and I’m tired of going to bars.’
Dennis, 27, from America, wants to learn Japanese – ‘honestly!’ His English flatmate, Ben, 25, is equally honest, ‘I hadn’t had sex for about six months and thought I’d give it a whirl.’
Keiko, 19, a student from Kyoto wants gay foreign friends ‘for fun’, Yuki an 18-year-old high school student wants friends or ‘maybe dates too’ and Sawako, 24, an Osaka OL wants a boyfriend, ‘I live in a really quiet place and it’s hard to meet people.’
While most of the men stress that they could, if they chose to, meet any number of desirable partners in bars or clubs, the women genuinely seem to have problems meeting the right sort of man.
Receiving ‘countless’ calls, some from as far away as New York, necessitates some kind of selection process. Tom decides on the basis of the first phone conversation whether to meet someone or not. Ben employs a more direct approach – he gets as much sexual innuendo into the conversation as possible. He met 15 tele-flirts, including 19-year-old Tomoko, a ‘little vixen’ who had described to him in detail which positions they could try together.
Sawako has a definite strategy, ‘I always check height and weight and I like to know if they have brothers or sisters or not. If they don’t, maybe they’ll be selfish or spoiled.’ Star sign, a full head of hair and shoe size matter too, not forgetting personality, of course. ‘If we hit it off on the phone, I put a circle next to his name, then call him back later to check everything.’ A circle and you’re as good as at the first meeting, a triangle and it could go either way, a cross and well, there are other ads to try.
‘If I don’t like him when we meet, I cross his name out. If he’s really nice I put a big, black mark next to his name. If I’m lucky he’ll have big muscles, too. I don’t have any black marks right now, though.’
If a meeting is arranged, it will probably be in a very public place, such as a train station or cafe. This gives safety in numbers and a certain degree of control to the woman, Tom thinks, and a chance for either to run away unseen should their potential squeeze have exaggerated on the phone. ‘Sometimes I can’t recognize the guy,’ explains Sawako, ‘I think many foreign men tell lies. They say they are handsome, but when I see them, they are fat and ugly.’
Others would seem to prove Tom wrong. Dennis: ‘I can’t believe how many are happy to come round here before they’ve even seen us, I mean, we could be anybody.’ Ben adds, ‘Japanese girls seem quite happy to knock on the door and just come in without being asked. Someone got a shock when there were other girls in the flat.’
No screening process can weed out the cranks, however. Eighty per cent of Keiko’s calls were ‘kinky’. They included heavy breathing, porno film soundtracks played down the phone, which gave her the chance to laugh at a few idiots, but some are more persistent. ‘I wanted to meet gay guys for friendship, but men call and pretend to be gay, then say they want sex. One daily caller offered oral sex until repeated rejections prompted him to as for an introduction to someone more receptive.
All agree that the worst thing resulting from the ads was the total invasion into their lives; double dates were made and Ben and Dennis in particular said they had to be careful to remember what they had said to whom. ‘One nearly copped a punch from Ben when she disturbed him and “a friend” at eight in the morning.’ Someone forgot to check the schedule, obviously.
‘You can meet some beautiful girls and some that are not so hot,’ says Tom. Oblivious to the self-incrimination he adds, ‘One girl was really drunk, another checked every room in the house then left; man, there are plenty of weirdos doing this thing.’
Dennis advertised for help with his Japanese, but eighty per cent of the callers said they wanted a sex friend. Eventually a 17-year-old student taught him. ‘She was really nice at first, but then she told me she was a virgin, had never even been kissed. Then asked me if we could have sex.’ He refused and found himself without a teacher.
Most, it would seem, get what they are after. Tom has slept with ‘at least one’ girl he met. Yuki had sex with one foreign man, ten years her senior and Sawako with four that met her strict standards. Ben has been, and very well may still be, sleeping with ‘four or five’, though he met one ‘cool girl’ whom he wants to see regularly on an exclusive basis, unless he gets a call back from the twins who contacted him.
In the name of research, I placed an ad of my own. I had several calls a night and had offers from women and men of sex both straight and gay and a Hello Kitty fax from a sixteen-year-old in Kobe. One of the respondents, Etsuko, 23 from Osaka, has slept with ten men she met through personals this year; she told me the colour of her underwear, and what we could do together. We didn’t meet; it all seemed too easy, too good to be true.
Dennis received a desperate call from a woman who wanted to meet the next day for sex. He said no thanks, so she offered oral sex. He resisted and she asked, her voice lowering, if it would make any difference if she said she were a man. Dennis said no and hung up.
Deception, or perceived deception appears rife. Emi, who slept with ‘less than ten’ people she met, explains how it could have been more. ‘I have a deep voice and so only communicate with people by e-mail. I also have a muscular figure and have been mistaken for a transsexual. One man asked to see my driving licence to prove I am a woman; another stupid, young boy ran away when he saw me.’
Naivete abounds and in a potentially dangerous situation, many seem to remain overly optimistic they can meet someone special. I too had lied.
‘Do you really look like Leonardo de Caprio?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Really? When can we meet?’
Epilogue
The world is much changed since 1998. The Kansai Time Out folded in 2009 followed by many other print magazines with lonely hearts columns. Kansai Flea Market is no more. Dating has moved online, where all tastes are catered for.
I signed up with Tinder, Bumble, Jmail and PC Max to re-run the research from the original article.
I was banned from Tinder almost immediately, seemingly due to wishing to remain anonymous. Bumble and PC Max check IDs, but Jmail does not.
I spent a couple of frustrating weeks being bombarded by fishing and catfish requests as I used a free service or the free points. I was asked to install bitcoin trading software, for a loan to help with shopping, for ID to confirm a bank account.
How digital lonely hearts ever find a real person to talk to is beyond me.
Perhaps the most disconcerting thing among all this was seeing one or two familiar faces. Their secrets remain safe with me, but perhaps not with their supposed online suitors.
I’ve heard anecdotes of successful online dating, but this writer is glad to be out of the dating scene. Caveat subscriber.