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TIME MAGAZINE, JUNE 4, 2001, VOL.157 NO.22
Dating Game
Looking for Prince Charming? In Japan, check your cell phone
By GINNY PARKER Tokyo
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Stuart Isett for TIME.
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At 24, Tokyo's Yuki Ito, right, is already a jaded veteran of the Net phone search for romance.
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Every day I am lured by digital promises. It starts when my Net phone rings—two short beeps meaning I've got mail—and I flip open the tiny screen to take a look. There in my mailbox is an advertisement for "Love!" "Friends!" or "Great sex!" from one of the thousands of matchmaking services spreading like kudzu on Japan's mobile Web. Starting a cybercourtship, the ad tells me, is easy. All it takes is a few clicks of the buttons on my mobile phone to fill out an online profile and post a personal on the site's bulletin board. After that, just sit back and wait for the responses to come rolling in.
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RELATED |
Tokyo correspondent Ginny Parker used her cell phone to log on to one of Japan's
hugely popular mobile matchmaking sites -- Looking for Mail.
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Our Interactive World, an hour-long special hosted by CNN's Michael Holmes and Tumi Makgabo, featuring luminaries from the world of information technology
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This is Japanese romance in the 21st century, where a wireless rendezvous is becoming as common as the cell phone. The meet-a-mate sites, which range from the harmlessly recreational to the downright raunchy, resemble PC-based services with bulletin boards, chat rooms and anonymous messaging. The difference, however, is the delivery. The new services are made to fit the tiny screens of the nation's Net phones, a feature that is putting cyberdating into the bags and back pockets of average Japanese Joes. It's mod-con love, where getting a date is as easy as ordering a double-cheese pizza. As someone who has never had much luck with old-fashioned blind dates—and was maybe warned too often as a kid about talking to strangers—I can't help but wonder: Who falls for this stuff?
It takes a few days but I finally track down Yuki Ito, a 24-year-old manicurist with purple fingernails and a ponytail. Like most people, she's a bit embarrassed that she has resorted to a dating service. "I was just curious," she explains, adding quickly, "I'm not doing it anymore."
For many Japanese, the anonymity of the Net is an escape from social strictures. For Ito it allowed her to pick a site and scroll through messages posted by dozens of men, downloading their profiles and punching in a come-hither e-mail to those she liked. All communications go through the website, which serves as a virtual go-between, shuttling messages back and forth and keeping identities confidential. Ito and each online beau would typically exchange messages for several weeks before she would give out her phone number. After chatting, if they hit it off, the two would schedule an apo—Japanese cell-phone slang for an appointment—to meet face-to-face in a pub or restaurant. Ito usually brought a girlfriend along as a security blanket. "We'd hide in the shadows before meeting him and peep out to see what he looked like," she says. If Ito got fed up with anyone in cyberspace, dumping him was as easy as changing her e-mail address or programming her phone to reject his calls. She did a good bit of rejecting: most of the guys she met were less than desirable in the real world. "The kind you don't want to see a second time," she concedes.
Evidently untarnished by disappointing dates, the proliferating sites have spawned a new virtual society with its own special words, rules and risks. Magazines and books provide detailed advice for Web-dating virgins, cautioning them about using language that seems too pushy or too polite. One online service even offers to help newbies compose messages guaranteed to score points with the opposite sex in cyberspace. The new lingo alone is dizzying. The lexicon includes freshly coined slang like netona, a mix of "Net" and the Japanese word for flirt. There's also nekama, a fusion of "Net" and okama (Japanese for an effeminate homosexual), used to describe a man who logs on posing as a woman.
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Mail-service icons promise much more than friendship.
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When it comes to Web romance, there are greater heartaches than the occasional run in with a netona or nekama. Although Ito hasn't found love, she has kept in touch with one guy whom I arrange to meet to learn how digital dating works from a male point of view. On a rainy night in front of a Tokyo train station, a 27-year-old fellow approaches me wearing sunglasses, bell-bottoms and clunky sneakers. He asks that I don't identify his name and profession, saying he doesn't want colleagues to get wind of his habits. What's the allure of phone dating, I ask. "It's like gambling," he says. "I'm always hoping to meet someone better." Methodical in his quest for an ever more thrilling one-night stand, he posts messages several times a day—using a computer, rather than a cell phone, for speed—so his entry is always near the top of the list. And he's creative when describing his job and personality. Apparently, it works: he schedules up to three apo a week. "It only takes me about 10 minutes a day," he says, a bit defensively.
What's the appeal of online dating? "People are lonely," says Sayaka Isono, an educator with the country's Parent and Teachers Association. "They want to make some kind of contact with others." The Web is a welcome relief for people living in a society that discourages the display of feelings. In the freewheeling, role-playing world of cyberspace, the usual social inhibitions melt away. "It's like becoming a completely different person," says Isono, who says he has made friends through a matchmaking site.
But there's a darker side to cell-phone matchmaking. Japan has seen a rash of violent crimes linked to mobile dating services, provoking an outcry from parents that the sites be regulated. In mid-May, police arrested a 25-year-old man on suspicion of killing two young women he met on cell-phone dating sites. A few days later, a Tokyo judge was arrested for allegedly paying a 14-year-old girl he met through a dating site to have sex with him. Critics claim operators prey on the young by sending out mass mailings promising instant friendship. "Even if they know it could be dangerous, they'll try it," says Isono, who is spearheading parent-teacher efforts to address Internet crime.
Now I'm even more baffled. Cyberdating is boring, possibly addictive and maybe dangerous, yet an estimated 10,000 matchmaking sites are flourishing. One site alone, called the yyclub, claims to have 600,000 members and to get 3,000 hits every five minutes. Realizing that I'll never understand their appeal until I try one of the sites myself, I log on to Looking for Mail in Tokyo. I go by the nickname Sakura, describing myself as medium height, slim and friendly. My message says I'm new and looking for e-mail friends. Hours after I post it, I have only three responses. I'm annoyed. So I log on again, this time as Cherry, a tall, foreign redhead with curves, a sexy aura and "a desire for some Japanese companionship."
Cherry does the trick. Within an hour she draws more than a dozen responses, and they continue to roll in over the next two days. I hate to admit it, but in a way this is fun. Guys from all over the city offer their e-mail addresses and phone numbers, along with invitations to karaoke, swank hotels and motorcycle rides in the mountains. It's flattering, ego-building and all just an apo away. Then I recall that Cherry isn't me. I log off.
Just when it seems cynicism will force me to drop cyberlove altogether, I discover a dating service that gives me hope. It's called My Prince, and for about $2.40 a month, I can exchange e-mails with virtual boyfriends from all over the world. The best part: they're all fictitious characters whose personalities are computer-generated. I've just dumped Chris, a private detective from San Francisco. I'm now deep in a virtual relationship with a moody model named Aki and a Latin lover called Don. O.K., so I may not find true love among these cybersweeties, but at least I have no illusions.
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Dating Game
Looking for Prince Charming? In Japan, check your cell phone
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