So I said to myself, "make some friends around my age whose interests more or less coincide with mine!" I went to a site that advertised 友達探し, which when I translate it, means "looking for friends service".
Registration was simple enough. For my short blurb about myself, I described myself as a Canadian working in the IT sector, looking for friends to do language exchange. I also uploaded a small picture of myself, the one in the "About Me" section here. Put my hobbies as anime, athletics (wouldn't be true a week ago :P), and onsen (hot springs). This was yesterday.
Guess what? I came back today to find my mailbox flooded. What's more, all the messages were from girls. I assume that it's a matchmaking site of sorts.
I started reading the emails. Some of them had "out of the blue" content that was disturbing in ways. Let me share some.
anon_girl1 20 years old
Subject: Good evening!
Message: Can we meet sometime later tonight?
(What? Eh? No introduction - nothing. A little scary. Time stamped 8:14 pm too.)
anon_girl2 28 years old
Subject: I wonder...
Message: I'm anon_girl2. Hello. It's lunch break, so I sent this message. Tonight, or maybe Saturday - free?
(Okay, a tad less scary. But wait, there's more!)
Message:
(Wait - we have plans for the weekend?! I haven't even replied!)
Message: (Long message, cut short) Still no response...? I can understand, I didn't put a picture of myself (actually she does have a pic, which is a shot of her bosom) and you probably feel insecure. I'm not very cute or beautiful so being ashamed of myself I don't do this often. You must let me pay the restaurant and hotel fees. I'm looking for someone that I can meet on a regular basis.
(Ooh, free food! - eh, hotel too?! . . . . .)
Suffice to say, I unsubscribed to that site right away. Now, was something lost in translation or what? Tomodachi sagashi means what?
Okay, there were a few other girls who were normal. A few were interested in language exchange and I'll keep in touch with them. Another was a 14 year old girl from Taiwan. Another mail came from two girls. Two of them share the same email address? Me no comprehend.
*yawn*.. time to sleep...
6 comments:
aww, you got offered sex from strange hot women and you turned it down?
heh. hehe, that's funny. Did you look at other "friend service" clients first? Did they seem like regular friend peoples?
So is this why people don't use Meeting Stones?... ;P
Whoa, Duy was here?! I didn't know he still kept up with blogs? :P
Anyways, perhaps the site's name actually does mean something else than what you think it does. I dunno, the fact that you only got replies from girls kinda sends a signal to me.
And two girls sharing the same email address, heh, that reminds me of the old strongbad email...."come back Ally, come back Ally's sister!!"
Heh, Meeting Stones still haven't picked up eh? :P
The site seemed normal, but now after searching for men and women, it seems to be that women outnumber men by a large margin.
What's funny is that a lot of them expect prompt replies, and they end up sending like 5-6 emails in a few hours. I think they use cell phones to send messages...
And lol, "come back Ally, come back Ally's sister!!"
Ha ha ha.
See Jason, you're looking for friends, while the site is probably a "friends" matching service.
What about that university student social club thing that you found, maybe meet some people there.
Or any colleges/universities around you, they should have some cell groups or clubs etc that you probably can just pop in on, heh.
Just be slightly weary of the people you meet on sites like those, could be 40 year old men acting as 18 year old girls, muhahahahahaha.
Hey Jason -
I had a tough time meeting people at first when I was in Japan - since you already speak Japanese it should be easy!
The rule is: Team Sports! Japanese love clubs, teams and groups. So go out to your rec centre or University, explain that you're a gaijin foreign student and that you want to join some teams. You can meet guys this way. Girls like sports more like badminton or volleyball.
If you're not into sports, the Universities or Prefecture Halls usually run english classes - volunteer to teach them. You're in Tokyo, so I guess things might be a little different... The key is group activities!
Also - ask your coworkers to introduce you to their younger friends. You'd be surprised who you meet...
Anyways, I found it best to keep the "working" part of my life more of a secret until I got to know people. Just say you're doing kenshuu mitaina koto but that you're an exchange student... you're just there to practice nihongo right?
Ganbatte!!!
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