I see more and more foreigners around Tokyo, in the clubs trying to pick up girls, but not necessarily all of them realize what are customs and expectations of Japanese girls.
I don’t pretend to know any ultimate solution to “score”, but with the years I learned a few things about Japanese girl’s taste.
First a division need to be made from those that are looking forward to meet a foreigner and those that don’t. There isn’t much help for the latter, but luckily there isn’t many of them. Of course not all foreign countries are equal, and some nationalities have more appeal than others..
All foreigners are expected to magically speak English. Girls want to practice English.. so, not knowing Japanese is not a problem. However, in a situation in which there is someone speaking Japanese fluently, the fluent speaker is likely to make the others feel dumb (it happens to me all the time 8).
Age matters in Japan more than in the west. It’s not so easy to guess the age of a Japanese girl, but it’s important to find out what are their expectations: Girls before 25 are in the playing & thinking about marriage phase. Twenty five and over are instead in the hunting & ready to marry phase. ..clearly, ultimately it’s all about marriage. Now you know that !
So, the great majority of Japanese girls is looking for a serious individual. Someone that is willing to embark in a long term relationship.
Then comes looks. Not looking like an otaku (a nerd) helps a lot. Talking about anime and video games straight away on a first encounter isn’t generally the best thing. If you introduce yourself as a game developer instead, things are quite different (^.^)y~~~.
Facial and body hair is generally not a good thing. The more travelled girls can tolerate it, but the younger ones generally hate it. Shaving everyday is definitely going to help !
With looks comes odor. Japanese men are definitely not odorless, but still, girls are absolutely terrified by bad smell ! American guys are generally pretty clean, but us European aren’t known for being overly zealous with hygiene. Sometimes foreign guys, even those that already live in Japan, walk in an apartment, take off their shoes and reveal 2-3 days old rotten socks !
That’s a big no-no, socks are to be changed every day. Also daily showers are required. In summer possibly twice per day.
Admittedly, I’m sometimes extreme about showers, but my opinion is that it’s always better to err on the safe side.
As clean as I am, I had my struggle with shampooing. At some point I had to change shampoos and I just realized that my daily shampoos weren’t enough. I tried a few things and I finally came one very simple conclusion: just wash better ! I used to have dandruff and I blamed it on shampoos for not being anti-dandruff or not being good enough. While in fact all I had to do was to put more vigour in the shampooing.. and I also use a conditioner after.
Some are afraid to take frequent shampoos because they think that soap is going to drive them bald. That’s actually a misconception, because greasy scalps turn into hell when not properly cleaned and hair follicles have nothing to gain and everything to lose from an irritated scalp.

So in the end it’s not so difficult:

• Be kind and honest.
• Don’t be a nerd: try to refrain a bit.
• Don’t smell bad: showers !
• Don’t be hairy: shave !

Having bad teeth instead isn’t such a crime as far as I realize. But of course a nice smile can only help 8)
Last thing about smell. I’m told that one can actually get sick in the armpits (!). Unusually strong smell comes out and surgery seems to be the only solution (really ?!). Apparently this sick armpits thing came up in a big way as some Japanese personality shared his ordeal with bad smell and his armpit surgery ! …ho ho ho ho !!
I personally think that showers and deodorant-stick are all that most people need.. but who knows ? 8)

As far as the main topic goes, there is a lot more to it, but I just wanted to share a few important points.
Ultimately it’s all about individuals and girls just want someone they can trust. So, if you are a foreigner looking for some fun in Japan, try to be nice and honest upfront. I see a lot of foreigners getting lucky with gullible girls that end up heart broken.

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Japan, Japanese girls at 9:17 PM EST

19 Comments »

My favorite place in Tokyo is the Shibuya area. It’s filled with sexy young girls wearing miniskirts with over-knees stockings over high heels and superpadded bras.
Most of them also carry $1000+ Luis Vuitton bags and one has to wonder how would a 18 years old girl afford to spend so much on a bag.  ..but women are in high demand and those girls really make their best to look their best.
Miniskirts can do wonders. A cute girl waiting for a friend has a good chance to get hit by a youngster offering to go for a tea at a cafe or for a meal depending on the time of the day. That’s called nanpa. A practice that is relatively well tolerated.. in the sense that one doesn’t get sent to Hell but rather ignored most of the time.. and could possibly actually manage to get a phone number !

There are then those that approach girls for business. The so called scouts. They look for girls hungry for money and willing to work at various levels of the “entertainment business”.
Hostess bars (or Kyabakura) offer quite a bit of money depending on the qualities of the girl and on the level of work. Working there, a girl gets to meet wealthy customers that may ask them to meet outside work for social events, but not necessarily for sex. Sex would be bad business because some customers could stop going once they got too intimate with their favorite girl.

Sex is still big business however. Recently a friend of mine got offered 100,000 yen (about $850 or 650 Euro) per session of some sort of photographic business.
In those cases the scout will come ask what’s your wish for material goods and will tell you something like: OK, you can have it if you come work a couple of days for this business.
100,000 yen is a lot of money for a day of work !! This works also because porn acresses in Japan are not necessarily professionals. You don’t need a boobs job. Acting shy and passive has its appeal and surely comes easier than the aggressive exaggerated acting that is seen in porn from western countries.

In all this, I sometimes try to think what it means to be a young girl.. to be in a situation where you have to decide what to do with life and be courted by countless guys offering you drinks, food, presents just for spending your time with them. And easy money for being promiscuous.

..it’s easy if you are easy 8)

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Japan, work at 2:47 AM EST

1 Comment »

On the web I can only read bad critics about PlayStation 3. Everyone seems to hate it. Hate the price, hate the fact that it doesn’t come out with many games. Everyone loves the Wii though.
Clearly preconceptions are just that. Wii is not out and very few people will have a PS3 for a while, so it’s not possible to have an objective opinion. Is this Wii really that much fun ?

As I mentioned before. As a programmer that likes 3D graphics, I hate the fact that Wii’s hardware is so underpowered. But this affects me also as someone that has passion for great visuals in games. I like realism, I like special effects. People love great graphics, otherwise they wouldn’t go watch so many CG movies or so many movies with special effects in them.

To me the price is not an issue, but perhaps I’m privileged. I suspect that most people that criticize the PS3 are just going with the flow. Echoing strong wise opinions about value of the money and playability over graphics. So much wisdom, but how many of those that hate this whole PS3 deal aren’t really secretly hoping to get one ?

I think that Americans basically culturally love Nintendo, dislike Sony as a corporate and are pretty happy with the XBox 360.

Personally I don’t have that much time to play. I also don’t like to stand in line just to get a toy.
If I get a Wii, it will be to used for social events.. for casual gaming when there are women around.
The PS3 would be for serious gaming. That is if I will be able to buy one easily and if there is a game for it that I must buy (most people actually decide based on the game).

The killer application for me is probably Armored Core 4 . Provided that the controls are improved since the last version I bought for PS2. Also, I’ll have to see how it compares graphically between the XBox 360 and the PS3. I’m definitely not buying two versions of the same game !

I guess I pretty much don’t give a shit about cute games. I like my giant robot and racing games. Variety is good, but giant robots are better 8)

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Diary, USA, Videogames at 5:10 AM EST

9 Comments »

This is so dumb…
The majority of USA citizens managed to approve a war that was obviously filled with lies from the start.
Most opposition approved it as well just because they feared that they would sound too clueless if by any chance Bush was right about WMD, and generally wanted to share the merit of a possible splendid outcome.
The people were with their Master in Chief.

Democrats then, slowly started opposing war as things obviously weren’t going as planned and WMD were nowhere to be found.
This wasn’t enough because Americans, once again, managed to vote for Bush !!!

Now Americans don’t like the war in Iraq ! They say they don’t like their mostly brainwashed either gun-loving or “too poor to get an education” youngsters to die …albeit at a much slower rate than Iraqi..
They voted Democrat because they wanted to punish Bush. But who is going to punish their dumbness ? They voted Bush once (give or take some stolen vote) and then once again well into the Iraq mess.

I understand that people are easily manipulated by the media, and various advertisements.. but ignorance generally isn’t a good excuse.

I vote against the clueless voters of the US of A.

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, USA, Politics at 9:25 AM EST

28 Comments »

As the month started, I started working too. My new employer is a popoular Japanese game developer and publisher.

On my first day, I got in the office at 10:30 in the morning. There I underwent the general introduction for new employees along with 10 other new recruits, although only one other programmer, which actually ended up in my team.

I can say that I’m pretty happy with how things  have gone so far. Working for a big company has it’s advantages. I got a superfast Dual Core Pentium 4 3GHz, 2GB of RAM an nVidia Quadro FX, a 24 inches Dell LCD monitor (Dell is selling some huge and cheap monitors here in Japan recently !) …and a crappy, supercheap ball mouse from Microsoft. I guess real programmers aren’t supposed to use mouses 8)

My coworkers are pretty cool. They all seem motivated, talkative. There is palpable excitement, it’s a great feeling, it makes me want to work ! The other day I had a private meeting with a guy in my team just to talk about graphics.
After many years I’m also being asked to go to GDC and Siggraph !! Yes !!

Admittedly, I’m in a sort of a special team, concerned more about research and less about immediate development. Other coworkers are working very long hours, and I fear the day when that will come for me.

The offices take several floors of a pretty large building. There are little or no directions around. So, one has to pretty much carry around printed maps of the floors !

It’s so different now that there are actual refreshment rooms. I can just step out and grab a coffee or a snack.
Work time is also flexible. One is expected to do at least 8 hours of work per day but can get in anytime before 11 AM and leave by 4 PM or so (provided that 8 hours have past).  ..well at least in theory.
The actual work time rules seem to be a bit more complicated but I honestly didn’t catch the details. It was all explained in Japanese.
Some of my coworkers speak good English, but otherwise a minimum level of Japanese is required.

cool cool

…and my new TeraStation 1.6TB gave me problems again. After downgrading the firmware and restructuring the array, disk 3 failed again. I then restructured again, made a disk check (takes several hours) which says that things are OK, but I doubt that !
I’m now trying to see if the support at Buffalo can give any hint, before sending the TeraStation back to them for eventual repair.

Sort of sucks.. and I’m sleepy !

zzzzzzzzzzz
poof

Edit: Fack ! I fixed the spelling error !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary, Japan, work at 3:59 AM EST

13 Comments »