What Dating In Japan Taught Me The Hard Way

Yo this isn't a video for those of you looking to come here to have your fun. I wanted to make this video for those of you who are curious on what it's like to have a serious relationship and what it means to date with intention here in Japan. Now I've been here for almost 10 years and most of my dating experiences have been in Japan, more specifically in the city of Tokyo. I've had one girlfriend back in the U.S. We broke up in my early 20s and since then I moved to Japan. I've dated both Japanese and foreign women and there's a catch 22 to dating both. I want to give you guys a disclaimer. I'm not here to tell you that my story is the truth. My story is exactly that. My story is my perspective. I want you guys to use the things that I'm saying as a way to give you your own perspective as well as give you some insight on what it's like for other people to date here. I think that there's three types of Japanese women. One, you have the traditionally minded Japanese woman who is curious about dating a foreigner. Two, you have those Japanese girls who are like, yeah I feel like a reject from society and I'm looking to date a foreigner because they're also not Japanese and I feel like we'll be good together. And then you have the third type of woman who's just trying to have some fun and they can sometimes fit in the first two categories. So let's go with the first one. You have the traditionally minded Japanese girl. These are the girls who spend most of their life here in Japan. Maybe they lived abroad for like one month. But for the most part, they like being Japanese. They enjoy being Japanese. But they feel like if they date a foreigner, they can get that romantic, idealized Hollywood experience that they see in a Netflix TV show somewhere. And they very much so expect you to be that guy, but safe enough to bring home. Meaning that you're that guy when they like you to be that guy, but also you know when to turn on the Japanese culture side and be able to speak Japanese so you can meet your parents, understand the traditional way of doing things here. Then you have that other girl. This is the girl who feel like a reject from society. Maybe they dislike Japanese guys. Maybe they feel like they don't fit into the traditional view of what's attractive here. And they feel like since you're a foreigner, that you have a different mindset of what beauty is. And they want to date you because you're also different. And maybe one day you want to go back to your home country so they can come back with you. That's the second type of Japanese girl. Now I've dated both and I want to give you guys my own personal experience. I think at this stage of my life, it's hard for me to date 90 if not 95% of Japanese women. I won't say all because the world is a big place. I am painting broad strokes here. I am not trying to generalize all Japanese women. I'm just telling you from my experience. But yeah, I don't think that I could see myself dating majority of Japanese women because there's a disconnect between us. You see, it comes to no surprise. I'm a black American. If you're watching this video, if you haven't realized that, I don't know what to tell you. But I am a black American living in Japan, which means that as a black American, I occupy two sets of consciousness. What it means to be an American and what it means to be black in America. And I think when it comes to most Japanese women, when they see me, they see an American first, but then they see that I'm black. So what does that mean? There's a culture and then there's a subculture. When these Japanese women want to go on a date with me, they expect me to be this American, at least some. You have some women who are really into hip hop. That's a totally separate story. Those women are totally different. But for these traditionally minded Japanese girls, they expect me to be this American guy who's like safe, fun. Maybe they see Malcolm in the middle and they expect me to act something like that. And I'm not like that. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. My family were not well off by any stretch of the imagination. We weren't dirt poor, but we weren't like middle class by American standards. And I've worked really hard to make it from poverty to privilege. And I go on a date with these Japanese women who grew up in a life of privilege. You got to think, when you live in Japan, Japan is a very safe place. Japan has a social net the likes of which America we want to have. Universal healthcare companies that can't fire you, a lot of these women grew up in two family households. They are pretty well off compared to where I came from. And when we go on these dates, they see me. And objectively speaking, I worked really hard to make myself a self-made man in Japan. I mean, by any objective measure, I'm in the top 10% of income earners here. And I think I exude that when I date. I don't lead with that, but I exude it. Women look at me, they see ambitious masculine and emotionally intelligent guy. And they assume that I never had any trauma. I never grew up in a ghetto and that who they see me for presently is the totality of who I am. And that's where the disconnect lies when I sit on the opposite side of the table on a date or me and this girl, we've been dating for a couple of months. They see me as someone who is in a privileged position now and they're also in this privileged position. But that's where the disconnect lies because I have different values. We may occupy the same space, but how I view the space is different to how she may view it. Where I choose to spend my time investing in myself because I'm afraid of failure to be quite honest. And I don't want to go on vacation every three months to see a hundred different countries because I want to stack my bread to make sure that I never have to know what it feels like to go bankrupt ever again, to know what it feels like to be poor, being on like welfare ever again. She doesn't understand what that means. And that leaks through in the way that I date. We have these differences in worldviews that it's kind of hard to bridge that gap unless you experience it for yourself or you go out of your way to understand what that means. Say for example, another point, a Japanese girl who has experience living in America, they feel like they're Americanized. But what exactly does that mean? I'm going to tell you straight up, just because a Japanese girl is Americanized, if you spend majority of your life in one country, you're mostly that culture. So when she says like, yo, I became more Americanized and I'm more open-minded than average Japanese person. True, but are you open-minded to American standards? So what does that mean in context of dating a black man? Say for example, I think about one of my exes and we had this disagreement about morality. And this is a big deal for me because her as a Japanese person, she views the law as moral. If it's illegal, therefore it's against the law. As a black man hearing the stories of my mom growing up during like the civil rights era. So my mom and my father was born in the 50s. They spent time down South. I do not view it as such. The law to me doesn't necessarily equate to morality. For a long time in America, it was illegal to be black in certain states. Just straight up, it was illegal to be out during certain time periods at night. For me to view the laws moral is a complete disconnect to what all my ancestors have went through. And the history and tradition that I was raised is that sometimes civil disobedience is important when it comes to establishing a healthy society. That certain laws are meant to be broken to progress society forward. If you live in a society where it's like, no, we're collectively minded. We want to keep things the same. How do you bridge the gap when you're trying to build a long-term healthy relationship? I think if I ever had children with this woman, that would be a struggle. Which side or which viewpoint would my kid be raised with? Fit in, be quiet. Even if something is unjust, just hold still and don't take up too much space. Or no, be yourself, be individualistic, stand up for what's right. And I'm not here to tell you that my viewpoint is the right viewpoint. Because in Japan, that sort of thing has worked. I mean, this country is stable, it's healthy. People live a long, prosperous life. But in America, it's hard for me to adopt that mindset. So when I think about the long-term ramifications of being a traditionally minded Japanese woman, there's a wall there for me. We would never understand each other beyond a certain point. And I think a lot of foreign guys who come here, they get that. Especially guys who are black or people of color. They feel like when you date these Japanese girls, that you can only really be a version of yourself for them to understand. Because if you show them the whole totality, it's so voided from what they're used to. Because Japan is a diverse place that it's hard for them to come to grips with and to interpret you properly. And that represents most of my experience dating Japanese girls here. Now, I do have that other category that I briefly mentioned, the Japanese girls who are into black dudes. They're a little bit weird because, I don't know, man, when I go on these dating apps and I look on the dating profile and I see a girl listening to Travis Scott and Future, I'm like, oh man, here we go. Who does she expect me to be? What black architect do I got to fit in? I'm not six plus six, and she don't expect me to be Kobe. So she probably expects me to be her favorite rapper. And sometimes that can put me in a weird position where I'm like, man, I kind of feel objectified when I'm dating this woman. Like she doesn't really see me for me. And although she recognizes the black experience, she has such a shallow viewpoint of what that is that I can't see this as anything more than casual. And as a foreign man, you have to sort through these types of Japanese women over and over and over again until eventually you may find the one that fully sees you for you. So I do believe there's Japanese women out there who are like that, but just like all places, it's difficult to find that person for you. So on the flip side, I think about my experience dating foreign women. This one is a little bit different. When I date foreign women where they're black, white, or from whatever, they do understand what it's like to be a Westerner and what it's like to be an American at a deeper level that most Japanese native women can't understand. The problem with dating foreign women is this. I made this point in a previous video on why Tokyo is a lonely place. I think that when people come here, they see Tokyo as a transitory experience. I feel like most foreigners where there are men or women come here to find themselves or they feel lost in life. And through that period of self-discovery, they often find themselves trying to have unique and fun and novel experiences. If you're someone like me who's been here for 10 years to build a career who's pretty settled here and pretty well-established, it can become a disconnect when you're dating a woman who's in that type of frame in life. And because I've seen this in my own life and my friend's life as well, it is pretty common for two foreigners when they date to be in a situationship. I remember I had this homegirl and she was telling me this experience that she was dating this guy who couldn't commit to a relationship. And like every single time she dated a foreign guy, it always ends up in a situationship. And I'm like, yo, what do you expect? Like truly, what do you expect? When people come here, most people who come here are coming here and they're just surviving. They're just getting by. At best, they're just staying through life trying to figure things out here. I'm a firm believer how you show up in one area of your life is often how you show up in other areas of your life. If someone doesn't have things settled in the main areas of their life, such as their job and their future, what makes you think that they can date you with intention? How can you expect that person to say, hey, I'm committed to a relationship with you for the foreseeable future if they don't see a future here in Japan for themselves? And that's a difficulty that you have to accept because so many people who move here from foreign countries are trying to figure things out. And that's a tough thing. And I'm just going on the surface of why it's hard dating a foreigner, as well as a Japanese woman. Another thing that people won't tell you on the internet, but a lot of my OGs will tell you, especially in the barbershop, and I think this applies to both foreign and Japanese women. You guys better be careful if you guys want to come here. I know a lot of you guys are in the U.S. right now idealizing what it's like to date a woman in a foreign country, and it can be fun at times. I won't even cap to you about that. But I will tell you this, you are adopting a certain level of risk that a lot of my OGs mentioned. Case in point, let's say, for example, you date a girl here, whether they're Japanese or they're foreign, and y'all have a kid here. So what happens when you guys break up? I've heard countless stories of men who date Japanese women. And you gotta think that when you break up with somebody, it's a single-parent custody system. So when you break up with that Japanese girl, she can legally take your kid away, and there's barely anything that you can do about it. Like I've heard stories of guys who fought years to see their kids, but the courts, city hall, will give them no information. Homie and girl got into an argument. Homegirl decides to move to a countryside in Japan where her parents stay. The dude doesn't know where her parents stay, and the woman has no obligation to give that information at all. That's the worst case scenario that I've heard here, and it's happened to many of guys here. And I wanna tell you dudes, you better be careful. And I think this also applies for women thinking about dating Japanese men here. Because if you're a Japanese woman or a man, you know how to navigate the system in a way that a foreigner never can. Also, you have legal residency here. That foreigner could be formerly on the spousal visa, or they could be on the work visa that can expire. And that's just one case for Japanese women. I remember having this conversation with a woman I dated from the past who wasn't a Japanese woman. She was from Europe. We was having a conversation one day, and I'm like, yo, what happens if me and you got together, we've been together for a couple of years, and let's say, for example, that we broke up. You told me early in our dating phase that you will follow the man that you love anywhere. Because you love that person. So let's say me and you had a kid, and then we broke up, and you dated another guy who you love. Would you follow that man to another country and take my kid away? And she told me straight up, I can't promise I wouldn't. And that moment, the cold-hearted truth set in for me. Who I pick has huge risks on whether or not I'm able to see my kid in the future if I ever have one with this person. And that made me move different from now on when it comes to dating. I have to be sure whether it's a Japanese woman or a foreign woman that whoever I pick is someone that I can absolutely trust. And even then, you have to be extra careful. Because it's not like dating women from back home where it's like, yo, you and home girl broke up, but she lived down the street from you. Or let's say she doesn't, she isn't from your city, and she moves to a different state. You might have protections in the United States. You have legal rights to live in the United States. What happens if you get deported in Japan? You will never see your kid again. What happens if your work visa expire and you can't find a job here? There's so many different things that you have to consider if you are truly thinking long-term here and you're trying to establish a family unit. Not hoping whoever watching this video has never experienced something like that. And those of you who want to come to Japan anyway, because I'm not trying to scare you away. I'm just, I want you guys to consider the other side of things if things were to go to ---- because that can absolutely happen to anybody. And I guess on a lighter note too, when it comes to dating a foreign girl here as well, even if you remove the idea of children being involved, if you're trying to build a future with somebody, and let's say, for example, you don't want kids, what happens if you're American and you're dating a girl from Jamaica? And I've had this happen to me where she was like, yo, I'm living in Japan right now, but one day I see myself going to Jamaica. I don't. I mean, I love Jamaica. I want to visit there, but I have no interest in going there. If the homegirl was like, I'm going to Europe, I ain't trying to go to Europe. I like Japan. And if I was living in Japan, I'll probably either go on to Thailand or back to US. So when you're dating somebody and you're thinking seriously, you're thinking at three to five to 10 year and more mark, you have to start planning out your future and make sure that both of you guys have a shared perspective of what this future is. And I think that's part of the reason why so many people get into these situationships because one person or both people have no idea what their future holds. So they're like, yo, let's just keep things casual. And it ends up turning into something that's complicated. And yeah, man, I don't know. These have been my experiences when it comes to dating both foreign and Japanese women here. And I told you in the beginning of the video that this is a catch 22. So you can date this Japanese girl and y'all have this cultural disconnect or you can date this foreign girl who may understand you, but she has no idea on where she want to go in life. And that can be something risky for someone who do know what direction they want to go towards in life. So yeah, that's my video on what it's like to date here in Japan. I wanted to share a little bit of information for all you guys out here that want to have an idea of what it's like to date seriously. It's such a broad topic that I can't cover everything in this video, but I wanted to share this bit. Anyways, if you guys made this far in the video, I'd like to thank you guys for watching and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.