Hi everyone,
I recently moved to Tokyo, and I feel like I could use some advice to recalibrate my European sense of what is “normal” when it comes to dating Japanese women.
I arrived about a month ago. My Japanese is around N5 level, so I can manage a little, but I still struggle a lot when speaking because my vocabulary is limited. I am working on that through regular study.
Not long after arriving, my manager invited me to speak with a Japanese colleague, who I will call “Jenny,” because she speaks a fair amount of English. I went into the conversation casually and did not expect much, but we ended up talking for around 30–40 minutes and I found her surprisingly interesting very quickly. She seemed to tick a lot of boxes for me, even though I was not especially looking for that at first.
At the end of that conversation, we both said we had had a good time talking and that we were looking forward to seeing each other again at a work social event the following weekend.
At that event, I had the chance to talk to her a bit more. I tried to show interest in a respectful and natural way, and I also hinted at other opportunities to meet again. Overall, she seemed receptive, but I am very aware that I may be biased in that interpretation.
After the event, I managed to get her contact because she was about to leave the company, and I thought it would be nice to keep in touch and maybe get to know each other better without pressure.
This is where I started getting confused.
When texting, she does reply, and on the surface she can seem enthusiastic, but the feeling is very different from how she was in person.
Her replies are usually short. She answers my questions, but does not give much that helps continue the conversation, and she rarely adds anything that moves it forward. She also often replies late in the evening, which I do not read too much into because she may simply be busy. In fact, part of me thinks that if someone was replying around 10 p.m., they probably did not actively dislike the person they were replying to.
Because of the weak texting dynamic vs in person chats, I thought maybe she just was not much of a texter, or she was busy, so it would be better to try to see her in person again before she left the company.
I then tried to ask her to meet for a walk, but unfortunately I got her last day date mixed up (she already left). Because of that, she understood my message as me asking to meet on the same day, at the end of her final workday. She replied apologetically and said she already had plans, using crying emojis. I later clarified when I realized I had mixed up the dates, explaining the misunderstanding, and she reacted with crying emojis, but nothing more.
The European in me was hoping that, if she was really interested, she might have suggested another day or time herself. But I do not know whether expecting that is too direct or too influenced by my own cultural norms.
There is one more detail that may or may not matter.
I had been in a long-term relationship, which officially ended few days after meeting her (a long and peaceful 7-month process concluded). At work, I never lied on my status when people asked. Even though Jenny and I had never discussed that topic directly (too early), I wanted to make sure she was not holding back because she had heard I was unavailable. I managed to pass the information through to her in an appropriate and indirect way. Now I am left wondering whether the low engagement was already the answer all along.
I am only interested in Jenny's story and personality, I do not have much energy for dating other people right now. I met Jenny by chance and she genuinely stood out to me, and I wanted to see where it might go.
What bothers me is that I do not feel I am getting a clear positive or negative signal. It feels stuck in a perfect middle ground: not enough to feel encouraged, but not enough to feel clearly rejected either so I get her out of my mind.
So my questions are:
• Is this kind of ambiguity normal in Japan?
• Is the low-effort texting a lack of interest or not wanting to show too much interest too fast?
• Most importantly, at what point should I stop take that a lack of interest and move on, I am fine with it but rather know 😅.
I really appreciate honest opinions. Let me know if this is relatable to your experiences. I mainly want to understand the cultural side better and learn from it (regardless of the outcome of the story here).
by VivaPT