Seven Pieces of Advice for Getting a Japanese Boyfriend as a Black Person

1) Stop and think about what you're doing.

Perhaps you've fallen in love with the mysterious, sexy ways of your anime husbando. Maybe you came across a picture of a super-kawaii Japanese guy on the internet and got sucked into a vortex from which you neither know how to nor want to escape. Perhaps you love J-Pop. Perhaps you love K-Pop and any guy resembling an East Asian is "close enough"—

Stop.

If you are specifically targeting Japanese or East Asian guys, you might be approaching or have already crossed the line of objectifying people.

I'm not saying it's inherently wrong to want to date a person of a specific ethnicity, but I implore you to think of why that's what you want. Appearance? Personality? You can find traits, appearance or personality, that are attractive to you in a person from anywhere. There are at least hundreds of millions of men available on this space rock.

If you meet a guy who is your type, and your only reason for not dating them is, "but it's just... he's not Japanese," there's a problem. Work on identifying it.

Could be you're curious about dating a Japanese person and that curiosity will not break until you do. It could be that you've put so much effort into the pursuit of a Japanese guy that you don't want to fail.

Dating a person of a certain ethnicity is not a "prize." You do not "fail" if you can't meet someone of that ethnicity with whom you form a mutual romantic bond. You are not "less" if you can't find someone to date of that ethnicity, and you are not "more" if you can. That is an objectifying sentiment, and it's a trait of someone who does not have a high sense of self-worth. The person you are with does not define your worth. Your actions do that.

2) Remember that all people are different.

Can you paint the personality of everyone in your country with one brush stroke? No. We tend to generalize people more the less we know about them. You might be able to sum people in your country up in five to ten groups, but even that's not truly enough. People from other countries typically get summed up in one or two groups, which is even worse.

The Black American community typically gets summed up as "Ghetto, unproductive hoodrats." If we're lucky, we get summed up into "ghetto, unproductive hoodrats, and all the other black people." Hooray, two whole brushes for 40 million people! Japan has 127 million people. Without going into the sex ratio, age, et cetera, that's around 63 million men. If it's meaningless to sum up 40 million people into two groups, it's downright dumb to sum up 60 million into one.

"But there seem to be more people in this country that are my type than in mine, based on what I've learned."

Yeah, but that goes back to my first point, that while I find it okay to focus on people from a certain place, it's not the only place you should look, and you shouldn't discount other options. Men of your type come from all over the world, so keep your eyes peeled.

3) Find the Japanese people

Learn about what kind of Japanese cultural events occur in your area. If your college has a Japan Club, join, and make friends with the member of that club who either have Japanese friends, or are proactive about welcoming Japanese exchange students. Start taking Japanese lessons so that if you go to Japan one day, you'll be able to talk to people you wouldn't be able to otherwise. Most importantly, use dating apps to meet people instead of leaving things up to fate encounters at the library.

4) Fate will only get you halfway.

I don't believe in fate. However, if you do, it can only reasonably help you so much. Fate isn't going to drop your perfect guy on your doorstep in a box in-between episodes of Nichijou (I give it 15 years before Amazon will, though.) You have to put yourself out there. Guys can't meet you in public if you're being a homebody. They can't find you on a dating app if you're not using one. And really, when was the last time a guy hit on you at the grocery store? (Last Tuesday? Okay, never mind, that's never happened to me.)

Fate will only bring you a guy if it knows where to deliver him. Assume it doesn't know your home address.

5) Keep trying.

I can't speak for areas with a higher Japanese concentration, but if you are actively trying to meet a Japanese guy somewhere the Japanese population is low, it probably won't be easy for you. It will feel impossible at times. But it's only impossible if you give up.

I was convinced that I would have to move to find a guy who's my type (well-educated, good job, the personality traits I like, etc.) Of course guys of my type exist everywhere, but I wanted to move somewhere with a higher concentration. I stayed with a friend and his partner for a week or two in San Jose, CA, and even had a couple of dates. I loved the area, and it seemed it would be easier to meet someone I liked and who liked me back.

I told my Japanese teacher when I came back that I had given up on looking for a guy in the area, and her advice to me was that "you can meet the right guy at any place and time." She was right. There was no harm in continuing to try here. I reinstalled one of my dating apps, Coffee Meets Bagel. A few days later, I connected with Kazzy.

6) Push through the discouragement.

At times, it might feel like every Asian guy wants to date Asian or white people. You might be fine with that. But you might feel undesired, unattractive, or even... unworthy.

You're not unworthy. Asian men are not above you. They are not above anyone. They are human, just like you.

You're not undesired. Not every man will desire every woman/man. Unlike what the media teaches us, men will not try to get with every and any woman they find even moderately attractive.

I don't know whether you're attractive, in terms of appearance or personality, but you are probably a lot more attractive than you think you are. If that's not good enough for you, learn your way around some makeup techniques that work for you. If you don't do makeup, a charming personality will make even the least physically-appealing person attractive, and that person is not you, so think of the wonders it could work. From the little I know, people value confident, warm, outgoing people. Do some work to develop those traits, while maintaining what makes you you.

7) If you're a girl, don't act "shy".

Girls often use "shy" as a stand-in for "I don't want guys to think I'm desperate." I'm a "shy" girl by nature. My mom taught me, "If a man is interested, he'll pursue you." "Don't pursue a man or you'll seem desperate," and other discouraging sentiments that many other shy girls may have heard.

If we break guys down into three categories: Guys who think a man should ask a girl out, guys who ask girls out but don't mind or would like for girls to ask them out, and guys who are shy themselves and have trouble asking girls out, in my experience, the first category is the smallest. Maybe you like a guy with such a sense of masculinity. Personally, if a guy thinks like that, it makes me worried what else he believes is a man or woman's job.

Otherwise, make an effort to connect with a guy you're interested in. Strike up a conversation. The worst that can happen is he isn't interested and forgets you exist. If you strike up a conversation and you might not meet again, ask for his contact info if he doesn't ask for yours. The worst that can happen is he won't give it to you, and he forgets you exist. If he's a friend, it takes a little more effort, but just approach it as you would trying to date any friend. There is no harm in trying. On the other hand, you can miss out on a lot from being "shy".

~ * ~

I doubt this post is what you were looking for. One main takeaway is that the way to get a Japanese boyfriend is mostly the same as for any other guy. Be yourself (or try to present the best version of yourself,) and men who like that sort of thing will be drawn to you. Even if you think no one notices you, you might be surprised (an ex of mine told me I had friendzoned a lot more guys in our friend group than I realized, when I just thought none of them were interested.)

If you look at my mini-post Eight Things We Like About Each Other, there's nothing Kaz mentioned that was particularly specific to my being black or American. He likes me because I'm funny, a good mix of girly and not, thoughtful (stating it like this is embarrassing me so much...) and other traits that are just naturally part of who I am. I didn't change who I was, or approach dating him differently because he's Japanese. As people say, before being a person of a certain country, a person is a person. That is to say, you might think a Japanese guy is so different from you, but before being Japanese, he's a man. That's not to say there's no differences, but if you get to know him, he will probably be more familiar than you think.

Good luck in you dating endeavors,

~Decchan