Modern Romance (19 page)

“I once saw a guy posted a funny street sign,” volunteered Rinko, thirty-three. “I felt like I could tell a lot about the guy from looking at it.”

This kind of made sense to me. If you post a photo of something interesting, maybe it gives some sense of your personality? I showed a photo of a bowl of ramen I had taken earlier in the day and asked what she thought of that as a profile picture.

She just shook her head.

OH, I GUESS I CAN’T HOLD A CANDLE TO THAT STREET SIGN DUDE, HUH?

MACHIKON
AND
GOKON

So online dating is not taking off.
What else? There is a traditional group date called a
gokon,
where a guy invites a few guy friends and a girl invites a few girlfriends, and the group goes out for dinner and drinks. But even at these gatherings women report that most guys are too shy to ask for their numbers. For an exchange to happen, the host would have to announce, “Okay, everyone, let’s all exchange numbers.” I actually participated in a
gokon
in Tokyo once as part of a travel piece for
GQ
magazine. Unfortunately, the women they selected did not speak English and I was armed only with the Japanese phrase for “Do you like pizza?” By the end of the evening, filled with delicious yakitori (grilled meats) and beer, most of the women thought I had a story arc as “Indian Chandler” on
Friends
, and I could confirm that two of them did indeed enjoy pizza.

For those men we met who said that they were too busy with work at the moment,
gokon
seemed like the most comfortable option for them to explore meeting women. But this presents challenges for men who don’t have any female friends to organize a
gokon
with.

A newer trend for meeting people is
machikon
. In
machikon
men and women pay to participate in a huge, roving party filled with hundreds and hundreds of singles who wander through a neighborhood’s bars and restaurants. At some
machikon
most people go solo; at others partygoers begin the event by sharing a meal with the one or two friends who come with them, as well as with a few strangers of the opposite sex; after that the organizers move people around, musical chairs style, and participants wind up mingling with lots of other singles. What’s amazing about these events is that both the private sector and the Japanese government are now subsidizing the establishments that host them. According to Kumiko Endo, the sociologist who showed us around Tokyo and studies
machikon
for her dissertation, bar and restaurant owners get twenty-five to thirty-five dollars per seat that they give to the parties.

In all the research I’ve done on dating, I haven’t heard of another place where the state is throwing money into the singles scene, effectively buying a few drinks for every young person willing to go on the prowl. Thus far the public investment in these events is modest, but it’s a signal of how seriously the government views the marriage drought and of how much it will take to reinvigorate the matchmaking market.

THE RELATIONSHIP REPLACEMENT INDUSTRY: EGGS, PROSTITUTES, AND SOAPLAND

For a lot of the herbivore-esque guys we spoke to, it still seems like it would take quite a lot to overcome the hurdle of shyness to properly engage in these group dating activities.
There were also women who weren’t willing to settle for the restrictions that come with traditional marriages and families. Like women in the United States and Europe and an ever-growing number of other places, they want to have rewarding work lives and careers too. The problem in Tokyo is that people who aren’t interested in or capable of entering a traditional romantic relationship don’t have the alternative of an active casual dating culture like you may find in New York.

Lucky for them, Japan has not only a huge sex industry but also what some have dubbed a “relationship replacement” industry that provides everything from “cuddling cafés” (where clients pay for things like pats on the head, eye contact, and ear cleaning with a Q-tip) to full-on sex robots that are built to last for years.
15
I never thought I would say this, but of those two things, having sex with a robot seems like the more reasonable option.

The most popular kind of establishment in the relationship replacement industry is the hostess club, which is basically the latest variation of a long-standing Japanese business tradition where men go to a nice bar-type atmosphere and pay women to provide intimate personal service in a romantic but not explicitly sexual way. The women are like modern-day geishas: They light the men’s cigarettes, serve them drinks, and listen attentively to their conversation, doing more or less what an ideal Japanese wife or girlfriend would do.
16
Lots of men stop by these clubs after work, either alone or in groups. To be clear, though, this doesn’t lead to any sexual contact. No nudity or sex happens at hostess clubs. It’s basically like prostitution, but they just hang out with you. I was very confused.

Al, a young expat originally from Baltimore, tried to explain the motivations. “It’s like,
I’m lonely, I’m scared of people
,” he said. “
I need to vent or just have a drink with someone who will listen to me and not judge me
. They’re paying for the security. They’re paying not to be rejected.”

Women also go to host clubs, which provide the same service: outgoing men who converse and have drinks with them. Again, this does not lead to sex; it’s purely for companionship. These women are basically paying to hang out with nonherbivore men for a while.

But what about sex? Prostitution of the penis-into-vagina sort is illegal in Japan, and while there is a black market, the Japanese have also developed some creative legal alternatives. One that is quite popular and came up several times in our focus groups was Soapland, where a guy lies on a waterproof mattress and a woman covers them both in soapy water and slides all over him. You can pay extra for additional services like oral sex or a hand job. Soapland, which is just a ridiculous word, does not carry a huge stigma. (On a side note, I would give pretty much anything to have been in the room where the guy said, “I’ve got it! We’ll call it . . . Soapland!”)

Some men told us if they went out in groups of friends, it wouldn’t be absurd for one dude to be like, “Okay, I’ll catch you guys later. I’m going to hit Soapland real quick.” Again, it seems that, beyond the sexual pleasure, Soapland is providing a safe outlet for rejection-free romantic exploits. Why go to a nightclub to try to find casual sex and risk rejection when you can go to Soapland and be 100 percent sure a woman will place you on a waterproof mattress, cover you in lubricant, and then slide up and down your oiled-up body?

 • • • 

And of course there are straight-up illegal prostitutes.
When we pushed this topic, we were surprised at how prostitution seemed much more common and accepted than in the United States. One participant in a focus group was a teaching assistant at a local university, and he told us that his college students often talked to him about their trips to visit prostitutes. It didn’t seem to be a big deal to him. The students might as well have said that they went to get ice cream after class.

Now, admittedly, there are no perfect data on how often men go to prostitutes in different countries. But the best statistics we could find showed that roughly 37 percent of Japanese men have paid for sex at least once, compared with 16 percent of French men, 14 percent of American men, and 7 to 9 percent of British men.
17

For those men in Tokyo who aren’t into Soapland and brothels, there are sex shops everywhere, and they cater to every fetish imaginable, from French maids to girls in school uniforms to anime characters.

There’s also a booming market in sex toys, which are sold with no stigma attached. One of the most popular recent inventions is the Tenga. What’s a Tenga? If you go on the company’s website, you’ll see what might be the greatest slogan of any corporation ever: “The future of masturbation . . . is NOW.”

The company specializes in masturbation devices like the egg, a single-use silicone egg that men fill with lubricant and masturbate inside. When you’re done, you seal it up and throw it away.

Fun fact: One of the directors of the Tenga Corporation, Masanobu Sato, holds the world record for the longest time spent masturbating: nine hours and fifty-eight minutes. That means he could have watched all three
Lord of the Rings
films in a row while masturbating, and as the credits of
The
Return of the King
finished rolling, he’d still have had
forty-one
minutes of masturbating to do.

This also made me realize: The only thing sadder than holding the record for longest masturbation is realizing you lost it to someone else.

“Sorry, man, he just jerked off for a few minutes longer. Better luck next year.”

None of the news articles that described the lack of interest in sex in Japan really delved into this whole world of strange sexual alternatives, and when you learn about it, it does kind of explain the alleged “lack of interest” in sex. The herbivore sector is interested in sexual pleasure but just not interested in achieving it through traditional routes. In their eyes, it seems, if you’re so mortified at the thought of rejection by a woman, why not just jerk off in an egg and call it a day?

 • • • 

At this point you are probably wondering: What was my top meal in Tokyo?
Well, it’s tough to say.
I really enjoyed Sushisho Masa, a high-end sushi restaurant. However, I also really enjoyed the tasty tempura I had from the working-class vendors in Tsukiji Market. And of course there was the ramen.

To be honest, the food scene in Tokyo was way easier to understand than the singles scene. It’s hard to figure out why sex and relationships have changed so dramatically, so quickly, and why so many people have turned inward—staying home alone, playing video games, or hanging out in cat cafés—rather than reaching out for one another.

On my last night in Tokyo, I decided to keep an open mind and buy a Tenga. Every stage of it was a bummer. I went into a convenience store and had to say, “Do you guys have Tengas?” The lady gave me a sad look and pointed me in the right direction. As I paid, I smiled and said, “Research for a book project!” It didn’t seem to convince her that I was cool. Instead, she’s probably convinced I’m doing some very bizarre book called
Masturbating Across the Globe: One Man’s Journey to Find Himself.

When I got back to my hotel room, I opened the thing up and gave it a go. I was kind of excited to see if it really was masturbation taken to the next level. Masturbation at the current level feels pretty good, so maybe this wouldn’t be bad? Again, no. The experience of using an egg-shaped masturbation device was both odd and uncomfortable. The thing you put your thing into was cold and weird. It felt like I was masturbating with a thick, cold condom on, and I didn’t understand the appeal.

But in a symbolic sense the Tenga seemed to be an alternative to casual dating and sex. It was a way to avoid putting yourself out there and having an actual experience with another person. Say what you will about casual sex and the substance and quality of that experience, but the more casual encounters I had in my own periods of singledom helped me grow as a person and brought me to a place to be ready to have a serious relationship. It also made me realize the true value of that sort of connection and better understand the advantages and disadvantages of a serious relationship. Dating has its downsides, but it can be a lot of fun. Even when it isn’t, when you’re meeting other people there are always experiences that you remember and learn from.

No matter what happens, you get a lot more out of it than you do from blowing your load into a cold silicone egg.

BUENOS AIRES:

THE LAND OF CHONGOS AND HISTÉRICO

After our trip to Japan, I got interested in seeing what happens in a dating culture where men are more omnivorous.
Eric and I searched around for the world’s particularly aggressive dating scenes and decided a good place to go was Argentina. If Tokyo is the capital of the “herbivore man,” then Buenos Aires must surely be the capital of the “rib eye–eating maniac.”

Whether or not they deserve it, Argentine men have a global reputation for their hot-blooded, romantic passion, which often bleeds over into something pathological and scary. In 2014 a survey conducted by a nonprofit organization called Stop Street Harassment revealed that more than 60 percent of women in Buenos Aires had experienced intimidation from men who catcalled them.
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To a lot of men in Buenos Aires, women’s concern came as a surprise. When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires’s mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn’t possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers.

“All women like to be told compliments,” he said. “Those who say they’re offended are lying. Even though you’ll say something rude, like ‘What a cute ass you have’ . . . it’s all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It’s almost the reason that men breathe.”

To be clear, this is
the mayor
. Upon reading this quote, I investigated, and I can confirm that at the time of this interview he was
not
wearing one of those helmets that holds beers and has straws that go in your mouth.

As you can imagine, these statements didn’t go over well. Hundreds of women—including the mayor’s own daughter—condemned Macri’s remarks, forcing him to publicly apologize.

Among men in Buenos Aires, however, Macri’s opinion probably isn’t uncommon. In Argentina, where Eric and Shelly, a sociology graduate student, spent a month doing interviews and leading focus groups, hitting on women with abandon is deeply ingrained in the city’s cultural traditions. Men are
expected
to be pursuers in what Argentines casually refer to as “the hunt,” and the primary arena for such pursuits is the street.