Japan Cupid – Japanese Online Dating

May 10, 2011 0 Comments

Japan Cupid is a popular Japanese dating and personals site. The site claims to be a good place to look for a Japanese wife or girlfriend.

Here’s a review of Japan Cupid, from a long standing member of the site with a Platinum membership plan.

As well as my membership of the site, I’ve also dated a number of Japanese ladies of the sort you might meet on Japan Cupid, so this is a 100% honest review of the services the Japanese dating site offers.

Japan Cupid Review

Japan Cupid is operated by Cupid Media. This is an Australian based company with a big network of internationally themed dating sites, including several in the Asian dating niche. Other sites include ChineseLoveLinks and Korean Cupid.

Japan Cupid offers both men and women a free standard membership plan, so you can sign in and have a look. On the standard membership you can view member profiles and get a good feel as to whether you think you could find love on the site.

The only thing you can’t do with a standard membership plan is contact other free members. There’s more about costs below. What it means is that, basically, men end up paying for membership while Japanese ladies can make do with a free membership plan, especially if they’re young and beautiful!

Japan Cupid has a good selection of ladies on the site. There are sexy women, beautiful women, intelligent women, tall women, short women, cute women and many other types of woman! These women aren’t what you would call mail order brides. On the downside there probably aren’t as many female members as there are on the the average Chinese, Thai or Filipina Asian dating site. If you find somebody you’re interested in, you can send them interest or write them an email.

The matchmaking facilities in Japan Cupid are great, and it’s possible to search by geographical location (down to city level), age, religion, height and weight and a few other factors. The geographical search was useful for me. Japan is an expensive place to travel around, so if you want to find some Japanese ladies to visit on a trip to Japan then you want to find a selection of ladies within economical traveling distance of a particular city or prefecture.

By the way, it’s best to stay away from the younger ladies, particularly those below the age of 26. Often they just want to chat to a Western man, and will often just waste your time. With Japanese dating it’s usually better to keep the age difference to less than 5 years, maybe a little more if the lady is over 35. If you want a mail order bride who’s 20 years your junior then head to Thailand or the Philippines.

I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t had too many problems with dating site scammers and fake ladies on this site. Japanese people are known for their honesty, so it would be quite unusual to be scammed by a Japanese person. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that many dating site scammers are African or Middle Eastern. Often they will invent a story to explain their presence in Africa or the Middle East. Needless to say, stay well away from Japanese ladies claiming to be aid workers or working for Japanese companies in a developing country.

Talking of scammers, I’m also wary of the ladies on Japan Cupid who don’t post photos of themselves. Are they shy or are they scammers? I don’t know, but I suggest you don’t talk to them.

Japan Cupid Costs

As far as the Japan Cupid price goes, the membership plan subscription fees are very reasonably priced. The prices are similar to those charged by the more mainstream dating sites such as Match.com and eHarmony. The good thing about the membership plans is that you can contact an unlimited number of ladies for the fee. This makes the site much more economical than the pay per letter sites that are fairly common in the mail order brides industry.

Japan Cupid has two levels of membership subscription – Gold and Platinum. There aren’t many differences between the two plans to be honest. Online dating is all about impressing the opposite sex, so if you can spare the extra cash, go for a Platinum membership!

Many men like the idea of finding a Japanese wife

A word about cheapskates here. I know and I’ve talked to a number of Asian ladies who have profile on Cupid Media sites. Many of the men who contact them don’t even pay for membership of the site. Now do you seriously think that a Japanese lady is going to be impressed with a man who can’t even afford a few dollars for a month’s dating site subscription? Yes there are more ladies with Gold and Platinum membership on Japan Cupid than there are on the other Cupid Media sites, but first impressions count, and not paying for full membership doesn’t give a good impression.

One pitfall of using Japan Cupid is that the site is only useful if you want to find an Asian bride from China. If you’re not 100% sure you want a Japanese wife or girlfriend, then you’ll have to use a different dating site. And if you want to stick to the user friendly Cupid Media sites then that means paying for membership of Korean Cupid or Hong Kong Cupid as well as Japan Cupid.

My Japan Cupid Experiences

I’d like to say that I found my dream Japanese wife on Japan Cupid, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t have much luck on this site.

It’s famously hard to find a partner in Japan, and increasing numbers of Japanese men are choosing to find mail order brides themselves from Russia or China. Japanese women don’t have things easy either, which may partially explain why the birthrate has plummeted.

I have various things that count against me though, so learn from my mistakes (which are):

I don’t speak or write Japanese.
I am not American (and Japanese women do tend to idolise American men).
I don’t live in Japan (unlike other Asian women, Japanese women usually prefer to live in their own country after marriage).
I get the impression that Japanese ladies aren’t quite so proud of having a Western husband, and that finding a foreign man is very much a last resort. Compare this to Thailand, the Philippines or, increasingly, China, where a Western husband is a huge status symbol.

I’ve also found that Japanese women tend to be fairly shy, so it’s often better for you to contact them rather than wait for them to send you interest or an email. To men accustomed to being swamped with interest on Chinese, Thai or Filipina dating sites, this is quite a turnaround.

The important thing with online dating is not to get too discouraged, so below are some alternatives to Japan Cupid and Japanese online dating.

Alternatives to JapanCupid

Japanese ladies tend to be quite shy and only a small percentage of them would consider online dating.

Japanese ladies sometimes like the idea of marriage agencies. Two marriage agencies that specialize in finding Western husbands for Japanese ladies are Meet Japan Lady and Transpacific Marriage Agency. These matchmaking agencies have fewer ladies than there are on Japan Cupid. But the ladies may be a little more suitable for marriage to Western men.

The number one way of finding a Japanese wife is to live in Japan. Most Japanese ladies don’t like the idea of living overseas, so if you’re serious about finding a Japanese wife then you’ll have to think of a way of living in Japan.

It's much easier to find a Japanese bride if you're living in Japan

Personally I got fed up with the slow progress I was making with finding a suitable Japanese wife. Instead I turned my attention to China. China has no shortage of ladies seeking Western men for marriage. If you’re the type of man who likes educated and intelligent ladies then you’ll be blown away by the quality of woman on ChineseLoveLinks. Modern Chinese cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai are full of single professional Asian ladies. I’ve talked to Chinese ladies with degrees from English universities, ladies with MBA’s, ladies with successful businesses and ladies who speak fluent English. While many Chinese ladies are simply marrying Western men for money, educated ladies are often a good bet. They can find it hard to find Chinese husbands because Chinese men usually prefer younger housewives rather than alpha females. By the way, if you had your heart set on a Japanese wife, then why not look for one of the many Chinese ladies on ChineseLoveLinks who speak Japanese?

By the way, I would stay well away from the few Chinese ladies there are on Japan Cupid – I’ve seen a few of them and none of them I looked at appeared particularly trustworthy.

So if you’re thinking of finding a Japanese wife or girlfriend then Japan Cupid is worth a look. Sign up for free membership and see if you can find some ladies you’d love to meet in Japan.

If you have any comments or suggestions about Japanese dating sites, then leave your feedback below.