1. What exactly is a letter date? Do all members use this service? Is it something you have to do?

My name is Yossan, and I write for the column Darling. Starting today, I’ll be answering questions here. I look forward to helping you. 1. You can choose whether to accept or decline letter dates. 2. You can also communicate by email. However, I imagine there are relatively few offers from male members who prefer LINE. Basically, it’s one option for increasing your chances of receiving offers. <The general process> ① A male member sends a woman an offer for a letter date. ② Once she accepts, the club emails the male member to notify him. ③ The woman sends the initial message using the designated method of contact—email, SMS, LINE, and so on. ④ She submits a screenshot of the message to the club, and once it has been confirmed, the arrangement is finalized. ⑤ The male member is billed as soon as the letter date is confirmed. <Additional notes> The letter date is considered established when the woman sends the initial message or email, as described in step ③. The male member is responsible for what happens afterward, even if she doesn’t reply to subsequent messages or emails. Since there are no set rules regarding a gratuity for the woman, she may end up wasting her time. <An aside> I’ve personally experienced not receiving a reply to my initial greeting. However, when I checked with the staff just to be sure, I was told that the woman hadn’t sent the message correctly. We’re still seeing each other today, so I think letter dates can lead to all kinds of possibilities!

Yossan, a member who works as a systems engineer—nice to meet you, and welcome! I’ve also seen people who are okay with email only for letter dates and don’t allow LINE.

You don’t have to do a letter date. However, unless I’m exceptionally interested in her, I generally won’t make an offer to a woman who has indicated that she doesn’t want to do letter dates. So for an average woman, I think avoiding that restriction would leave a better impression. As a general rule, I make offers through letter dates. As others have pointed out in their answers, there are all kinds of men out there. One advantage of letter dates is that you can gain a considerable advantage before actually meeting. Being able to meet smoothly means you can understand each other far better than if you met without any prior communication, which makes it much easier to develop a good relationship. As long as neither person has any major issues, I feel that relationships progress much more successfully through letter dates than through a regular setup—perhaps in almost every case. That’s another reason why I think it’s such a wonderful system. For people without any major issues, letter dates are much more likely to work out than regular setups. In that sense, they may actually be a problem for the club, since they can lead to an extremely low number of offers.

> 1. What exactly is a “letter date”? With a regular offer, the club arranges everything and you meet the man at the designated meeting place. With a letter date, however, the process ends once the club mediates the exchange of your contact information. Because of that, some women say they feel overwhelmed when a man sends them long messages every day and expects a reply. (You don’t receive an allowance just for exchanging messages.) There are also cases where the man suddenly brings up the allowance, invites her to a hotel without even having dinner first, and leaves her thinking, “Is this really what a dating club is supposed to be?!” (No, it isn’t… ＞＜) > 2. I don’t use LINE. Is it okay to communicate by email instead? That depends on the man. If he’s okay with email, then it’s fine. But if he says that won’t work for him, then that’s simply how it ends. You don’t need to compromise your own preferences. Even if you start seeing someone who can’t respect your boundaries, you’ll likely end up repeating the same disagreements over and over. So if the other person decides it won’t work, I think you can take that as a good thing. > To the men: Please make more of an effort! I can’t accept anyone with a deviation score below 40! I really do wish they would make more of an effort. A lot of men send messages like: “I’m thinking of an allowance of 20,000 yen. If that’s still okay with you, would you like to meet sometime? We can meet in front of the station, and I’m thinking we’ll go straight to a hotel.” I thought people like that had a deviation score below 40, but apparently that’s considered normal. If women also think that approach is better because it lets them achieve their goal more quickly, then perhaps my understanding was mistaken. Still, if that’s how things are, I can’t help but ask: how is this different from a matching app or a dating site? I feel bad saying that about the men who take the time to communicate properly and build a connection. Incidentally, magazines used to have something called a pen-pal corner. People’s real names and addresses were printed in them, so looking back, it was an incredible era. Though perhaps there were fewer people who misused that information back then. For people who remember those days, getting to know what the other person was like through exchanging letters, gradually wanting to meet each other—that may sound old-fashioned, but I think it was a wonderful way to meet someone. It’s a shame that hardly anyone seems to use letter dates that way anymore. Of course, being able to communicate directly with the other person is essentially the whole structure of matching apps and dating sites. When you consider how many people actually spend several months messaging before meeting, though, I suspect most people use them simply as a means of arranging a meeting.

Date◎Yume, thank you. That’s exactly as you explained it. To add a little more detail, the man looks through the woman’s profile and sends her an offer, and things usually begin with exchanging messages on LINE or another app. Some people work out the terms through messaging, but I prefer to do that after meeting in person. If the vibe doesn’t seem right during the exchange, it ends there without meeting. The letter-date concept was created in response to COVID, but ever since it was introduced, nearly all of my offers have been for letter dates. That’s why I was really disappointed to hear a staff member say that most of the men have a “deviation score” of 40 or below. In my case, as soon as we start messaging, I’m almost always told something like, “Your personality and kindness come through in your messages, so I feel relieved.” I wonder if that’s the flip side of their low deviation scores… For women, I think one advantage is being able to quickly determine whether a man is gentlemanly, so I’d be happy if you’d be willing to accept letter dates instead of seeing them as a hassle. And to the men: let’s make a little more effort! You can’t possibly accept having a deviation score of 40 or below! To the person who asked the question: how about trying a reverse offer based on your letter-date experience? Haha.

“Letter dating” was an offer method first suggested by “A Confused Man in His 60s,” who also answers questions here. Rather than meeting in person right away, you initially communicate via LINE, email, or similar, and meet if you feel you’re compatible and agree on the terms. Some women don’t accept letter dating, so I don’t think it’s something you have to do.