I recently started working at a hostess club, even though I hate it, hoping I might eventually meet a handsome, wealthy guy around my age. But young men don’t come to hostess clubs, do they? It’s nothing but unattractive older guys. I’m so surprised—I’m screwed.

You’ll need to choose the right hostess club too—the clientele probably won’t be great otherwise. High-end clubs were expensive to begin with. Making them more affordable by charging by the hour is basically how hostess clubs came about. Maybe you could use your connections to get into those questionable drinking parties in Minato Ward or high-rise condo parties. There might be startup founders there. But there are also plenty of people pretending to be rich when they’re not, so you’ll need to develop an eye for telling who’s genuine. There’s also a lot of competition, so it’ll be important to figure out how to make yourself stand out and get chosen over the other women. It’s not exactly an easy path.

If you’re not mentally strong, even if you managed to date an elite, handsome older man, I’m not sure it would last long… It might be difficult. When I’m with him, everyone around us is highly educated too, so I end up feeling isolated ( ˊᵕˋ ;) If you’re looking to meet someone outside of universities or prestigious family circles, sports-related groups might be an option. Why not check out some sports clubs that require a fair amount of money to join? That said, you usually can’t get into those circles unless you’re introduced by a friend—or through a friend whose owner is someone’s cousin, or something like that ( ；꒳； )

The spoiled sons of established, mid-sized family businesses may go to hostess clubs and adult-entertainment establishments, but in the end, they marry through an arranged introduction. Apparently, before marriage, their background—including what their family did several generations ago—is carefully disclosed. There may even be an understanding that, once married, the family will build or purchase a house, or construct an apartment building. Academic elites work from morning until night. People say that if there’s a 20-point difference in IQ, you can’t have a conversation that really clicks. I doubt it’s that extreme, but if there’s too great a gap in intelligence or education, a man would probably find the conversation unfulfilling too. In the old days, you couldn’t even make a living without renting a room in a boarding house that included meals. To live independently with some privacy, you had no choice but to marry in order to secure someone to handle the housework. The idea that you weren’t truly an adult until you married remained until around 20 years ago, so I think people simply married whoever happened to be around when they reached marriageable age. These days, both men and women are perfectly fine staying single. There’s no need to force yourself to marry a woman you can’t even have a decent conversation with. Even if she gets pregnant and you marry, you may end up separating soon afterward due to incompatible personalities. There are also matchmaking apps, as well as marriage agencies where your background and other details are verified from the start. If your parents or family are respectable, you may also be introduced through an arranged marriage. Some hostesses even have PhDs, and there’s a wide variety of them. However, if you picture someone who simply wants to make easy money or catch a wealthy man without much effort, it would be difficult for her to have a serious, marriage-minded relationship with an elite. I don’t think young men engage in papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) very often.

In my experience, at least, most genuinely good men seem to get married fairly young. Even if you meet a young, handsome, wealthy guy who spends all his time at mixers or nightlife spots, won’t it probably just end with him playing you?

It’s hot in the mornings, so I got up early and took the dog for a walk. When I got back, I came across this short-sighted question and felt like calling it out. Think about it carefully. Don’t you agree with what Aya said? Rich men sometimes bring their wives to various social events. Do you really think they’d walk around with someone who can’t even say which university she attended, has no manners, comes from an ordinary family, doesn’t know how to dress for the occasion, and lacks refinement? Hostesses and papa-katsu girls are just used for short-term entertainment and then discarded.

What Aya wrote is exactly how I see it too—that’s the reality of the situation. When I was working as a salaried employee, I married a temp worker when I was in my mid-20s, so temporary employees can definitely be a possibility. Among the people around me, some married someone from the same university club, a fellow new hire, or a girl from my high school who met one of my male friends from university at a group date. That group date eventually grew into something bigger. At first, I invited some younger friends from my university and female friends, but then everyone started bringing their own friends. Eventually, both the men and women kept bringing new people, and I used to organize drinking parties similar to group dates that attracted around 30 people every week. Sometimes not a single person from the original group was there. Quite a few people seemed to be serious about finding a girlfriend or a marriage partner. Since the numbers kept growing every week, there were also a lot of beautiful and cute women—especially because we had started with a carefully selected group—and, from a man’s perspective, many of the men were fairly decent-looking too. Even so, I don’t think that many people actually ended up dating. The point I’m trying to make is that, unless someone you know invites you, the kind of encounter you’re looking for is extremely rare—unless you already have one in your life. There are places where women can meet men by paying several hundred thousand yen, but since the men there are basically just showing up to fill the numbers or fool around, the chances of getting married through one of those places are quite low. Also, at this point, I think you could meet plenty of men and women if you attend a school for professional qualifications. People tend to open up fairly easily there, and conversations can become quite passionate. That said, you would need to study seriously in order to have those kinds of meaningful conversations, so it would require a considerable amount of perseverance.

There are young, handsome, elite men out there, but for the most part, they marry women from the same social class as themselves. In other words, women who are beautiful, come from good families, and have strong educational and career backgrounds. In Japan, the most common pattern is homogamy—people marrying someone with a similar educational background. So if you want to marry an elite man, the quickest route is to become an elite yourself. That’s why elite men and women end up marrying through natural encounters: attending the same university, joining the same major company as coworkers, or meeting during their time as trainee lawyers, for example. (There are cases of baseball players marrying hostesses or celebrities marrying younger gravure models, but those men are wealthy in a different way from what you’d call highly educated elites, so they’re exceptions.) If you still want to take a shot, you could work as an administrative employee at a law firm or get into a major company as a temporary worker. At the very least, you’ll probably meet more respectable people than you would at a hostess club. Just don’t let yourself become someone’s affair partner.

When they’re young, they usually just work regular jobs. I’ve never met anyone who simply spends their days having fun because they have money. They don’t seem overly eager about women, either. Once, I said to one of them, “You must be insanely popular, with women throwing themselves at you. I’m jealous.” He told me, “That’s true, but whenever I show even a little interest, they all start taking me seriously, so I actually have to be careful. Keeping things transactional with money would probably be easiest, but I’m just not wired to do that with someone I don’t genuinely like. So despite how I may seem, I haven’t had that many partners.” When I ask what they want to do after saving money, they say they want to expand their business. I’ve never met anyone who said they wanted to spend all their money partying with girls. At least not among the people I know. Also, good-looking, handsome guys don’t seem particularly drawn to beautiful women. Maybe it’s because they already carry those kinds of genes themselves. They tend to value things beyond appearance—someone considerate of others, or someone who’s always smiling, for example.