I was personally looking forward to enjoying the events rather than making an offer to a specific woman. I understand that the COVID-19 situation makes things difficult, but is there any chance the events will resume soon?

Universe Club Tokyo’s Mamiya here with a reply. We put our events on hold when people began refraining from attending them. These days, avoiding the “Three Cs,” checking temperatures, disinfecting, and wearing masks have all become standard practice. Given the current situation, it’s difficult to recommend holding events publicly, from a social-image standpoint. Even if we took every possible precaution and promoted them as safe and secure, society simply wouldn’t accept it, making things extremely difficult. If we come across an event that’s working well in the meantime, we may adopt and incorporate its approach. However, I personally can’t envision it leading to enough demand or revenue. We’re still trying to determine whether this is the right time to take on the challenge. But just as it’s harder for someone overweight to say they’ll start dieting tomorrow than for someone who’s been training all along to aim for a marathon, getting started again feels like a real uphill battle. Heave-ho… come on, one more push. I’m truly sorry for making excuses. I don’t want to keep saying “we’ll do it” without following through, so I’ll be honest: at this stage, we have no definite plans to resume. Thank you for your understanding.

Maezawa from the President’s Office here. Thank you for your question. I imagine the men pay a fairly substantial amount to attend the events, but even so, they end up being almost break-even for us (not actually operating at a loss, but more like, “Where did the profit go?”). So even at that price, the company is practically volunteering its services. It’s quite difficult. Some women even start trying to introduce other women to the men themselves. (笑) That way, the men and women can meet without going through Universe, allowing those women to make a profit. (笑) Personally, I’m not sure what the benefit is. come to think of it, someone at the company mentioned wanting to hold an event, so they may possibly organize a small one, but the details are still unknown. I assume people like events because they can meet five or six women for the price of one offer. But if the company is going to hold events, considering how hard the event staff worked, I find myself thinking they should aim for the same profit margin as a regular arrangement and charge the equivalent of five men’s fees per participant—around ¥250,000, for example. Those who think that’s expensive may not realize how much effort the event staff put in… If they simply focused on attracting participants beforehand, trusted that the women would show up on the day, and did nothing else, the staff probably wouldn’t have to work so hard even with the previous participation fee. But then you could end up with the men there because they paid to attend, while none of the women show up.