I’m scheduled to go on a date tomorrow with a woman I made an offer to through Patro.

I understand how you feel, but this kind of thing happens to a certain extent in papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan), so you’ll have to accept that it’s sometimes unavoidable. If you go tomorrow and get a last-minute cancellation, your points will be refunded, so you can make another offer. If you don’t like that, since you’re a club member, you could have the club make the offer for you. I’ll share Fuu’s secret trick with you. This is honestly valuable enough to charge for, lol. When an offer is finalized through Patro, tell them in advance: “I’ll check in three days before (on the ○th) and again the day before, so please respond. If it’s three days beforehand, I can discuss changing the date or time. If you need to cancel suddenly after that, please be sure to let me know in advance.” (I use the same rule with my monthly arrangements.) Then, once you’ve confirmed the meeting the day before, tell them: “I’ll message you when I leave on the day, so please reply when you see it.” If you do all that, you can avoid cancellations almost every time. If that sounds like too much trouble, just have the club make the offer, lol. With my monthly arrangements, once we’ve established good communication, I tell them during the conversation: “If you don’t let me know at least three days in advance, I’ll end up paying cancellation fees for the restaurant and the room. That would be such a waste, right? I’d rather spend that money enjoying something even nicer with you.”

The King of Cancellations I get canceled so often that I even introduce myself to my coordinator as “the King of Cancellations”—a real loser of a guy. It doesn’t bother me at all, though. It means I don’t have to pay the allowance. After setting up around 180 dates, I often find myself satisfied simply by the fact that I made the offer. Like, “At least I made the offer instead of running away.” Just giving you a little update: I can’t help feeling that my retirement from papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) may be getting close. It’s almost certain that an unbelievably gorgeous woman—like, ten levels beyond “stunning”—will be staying at my place for about a quarter of every month. She had been asking me to move in with her for a long time. I could have done it whenever I wanted, but I kept putting off saying yes because it would make it harder to see my ace and my other stunning monthly-arrangement girls. Then she changed tactics and asked if she could stay over for just under a week every month, leaving me with no way to say no... Having someone this beautiful stay with me for nearly a week every month is an honor. And since it wouldn’t be full-time or even semi-cohabitation, but rather a short-term arrangement of about a week at a time, I figured it was probably the best of both worlds and agreed. She’s already quit papa-katsu, so there’s no allowance involved. She won’t accept money from me. She quit more than three years ago, but she’s continued seeing me regularly ever since. After all these years of treating her well, it seems she chose me because she feels comfortable with me. Incidentally, she’s the ultimate cancellation queen. She used to cancel without even contacting me all the time. She gets so much attention that I guess nobody ever complained when she canceled. Maybe she got used to it. But she always came to my place, so her cancellations never really hurt me. I never once blamed her for them. Maybe that worked out for the best, because she gradually started getting closer to me, eventually said she wanted to live together, and now our “one-quarter cohabitation” is about to begin. Questioner, if you complain about cancellations, you might miss out on someone truly special. The fact that a woman cancels on you can also be proof that she’s always been popular. So just keep a straight face and take it in stride. If you do, something incredibly lucky might happen to you too—just like it did to me.

I’m jealous—you’ve been sleeping through the entire Golden Week holiday. I guess I’ll just have to settle for smelling DeoCo body wash. Like Maezawa-san and Fuu-san have written, staying in regular contact seems to be the way to go.

If you’re using an email address or other contact information for Patro that you don’t normally check, you might simply miss the message. If she hasn’t come online yet, she may just not have seen it. If you can think of it as being better than an active woman who checks her messages constantly, I think it’s perfectly fine to wait until the day of the date. Since the date, time, and location—or at least the area—have already been decided, I don’t think there’s any problem with confirming on the day. Ultimately, I think it depends on how much you like her. Whether it’s Patro or Universe, the chances of being canceled on are almost zero. > Mac That really got the point across. Additional note: At the club, I’ve only had one case where a woman failed to show up for a scheduled date without contacting me. It was a setting date, and she didn’t come even when the appointed time arrived. I’ve never had that happen with a letter date or Patro. That was the only cancellation I’ve experienced. Apparently, the woman was banned from the club. Rather than worrying about something that may happen only once or twice in your entire life, it’s better to think of it as simply ending up with some free time if it does happen. It’s also important to stay prepared for anything when it comes to women, and I think having confidence that things will generally work out between men and women is more important than worrying about every possibility. > Makeo It’s impressive that you didn’t back out and actually made the offer! It sounds like the satisfaction and sense of fulfillment must be incredible too. I tend to run away, put things off, or pass on opportunities myself… I agree with what you wrote about how to think about cancellations. Since there’s so much to gain, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about things like that.

Maezawa from the CEO’s office here. Just because the man is the one paying doesn’t mean he can cancel whenever he wants. We’ve also received complaints in the past from women who had properly kept their schedules open, only for the man to cancel on his own. That said, if you still haven’t heard back from her by the day before, I feel there’s a high chance she won’t show up for the date. In that case, I think it would be best to contact the PATOLO staff and say: “It’s already the day before, but I haven’t received a reply. Could you check with her? If you can’t get in touch with her, I’d like to cancel.” Canceling simply because you haven’t received a reply the day before is perfectly understandable. However, there have also been cases where someone logged into PATOLO on the day and found that the date had been canceled without notice, despite having kept their schedule open. So I think it’s safer to notify the staff first and have them confirm that she can’t be reached, then proceed with the cancellation. It may seem odd to ask the staff about this when it’s an auto-date, but following those steps should help ensure that it doesn’t affect your rating. Also, rather than asking here, I think it would be better to contact the staff directly. This doesn’t really seem like something that needs to be asked anonymously.

I’m Andy, a male member. In a situation like that, I think it’s fine to cancel if you haven’t heard back from her by the evening. When canceling, there’s a section on the PATO side where you can enter the reason, so it probably won’t be an issue. Also, it seems you’re a Universe Club member, so you can contact your registered branch through PATO’s chat function. I think it would be best to use that. I hope this helps. *Update:* How did things turn out? I had a first meeting through PATO today. I gave my answer even though I hadn’t received a reply the day before, but I hadn’t made a restaurant reservation, so I was fine waiting until the day of. That said, if you’ve reserved a restaurant, I understand why you’d be worried. For reference, after I was canceled on a few hours before a first meeting when I had just become a member, I started handling things as follows: For all relationship types, I arrange first meetings on the assumption that we’ll meet at a café for one hour and then go our separate ways. If no reservation is needed, a same-day cancellation doesn’t really cost me anything. I only started making reservations from the second meeting onward, and that eliminated my worries about same-day cancellations. I’ve been stress-free ever since I adopted this routine: a one-hour first meeting, followed 30 minutes later by a reserved meal or hotel appointment with someone I’m seeing for the second time or beyond. If you don’t have anyone on a monthly arrangement yet, I recommend doing as many one-hour first meetings as possible and keeping things steady. Just sharing what works for me.