I noticed Tokyo Craigslist launch a few weeks ago and wondered how it would do, considering that the site is completely in english—is it really going to be used by the japanese, or is it going to be used mainly by resident foreigners? Poking through the site now neither one is the case, most of the posts I’m seeing are from posters in the US. I went through all of the major categories, of course, but since as we all know the most interesting ones are the personals, let’s talk about those.
Men Seeking Women, the most heavily-trafficked so far (where by heavy I mean five or six posts a day) brings us such gems as I AM 23 MALE US CITIZEN, U R ????, IN NEED OF CITEZENSHIP? – 23 (CALIFORNIA), Tom Cruise lookalike in NYC seeks Japanese girlfriend – 37, GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR JAPANESE WOMAN TO LIVE AND WORK IN AMERICA ! – 39 (San Francisco), NYC Musician seeks his Yoko!!, and I would like to find a japanese wife younger,sweet & well off to marry – 50 (California/Hawwaii). So yeah, mostly white guys with japanese fetishes.
Women Seeking Men has less than half the posts of M4W. The posters here are pretty varied: japanese women in Japan, some looking specifically for american men (either in Japan or in the US, race not specified); japanese women or women of japanese descent in the US, some looking specifically for japanese men; and korean women looking for japanese men.
Men Seeking Men has only five posts total right now, which I’m sure anyone who’s ever looked at M4M at any CL incarnation in North America will find shocking. Two of the five are americans visiting Tokyo looking to hook up, another is a curious 29-year-old who writes, “I have recently heard about bukkake and wanted to know if any of you have some stories or advice to give me about it. I would like to get someone to invite to bukkake in California.”
Women Seeking Women is even more pathetic than I expected it to be, only one post! She says, “Ok girlz, I need some help here… if you look like “M” or “Claire” from Sexysappho (dot com) PLEASE contact me ;)” Only one of the SexySappho models (NSFW) is Japanese and she’s not M or Claire, so I’m guessing this post was spammed to various CLs.
Many posts on Casual Encounters are from american men visiting Tokyo looking to hook up with japanese women, or american men (usually New Yorkers, but Los Angeles and San Francisco represent too!) looking to hook up with japanese women in their own cities, which is what I expected, but I did find one post from swingers: bi white couple wants asain couple – mw4mw – 49 (oregon) pic. Too bad they’re a continent away and can’t spell, or they might be getting some hot race-mixing swinger action RIGHT NOW.
Finally, everyone’s favorite category: Rant & Raves! Tokyo RNR gets a few posts every once in a while, some pissed off with how Tokyo Craigslist doesn’t serve the community: The problem with CL Tokyo is… (TOKYO) (“First and foremost, what in the fuck is it that you people don’t get…? It’s craigslist *TOKYO*. Would you stupid mother fuckers stop posting such ridiculous shit like your shitty assed two bedroom apt in buttfuck Kansas?!@”), Assholes, be quiet (Asakusa) (“If you want Japan youhave to come here, otherwise, keep your fantasies to your local R&R board. Please. …If I see you on the train platform I am going to push your ass in front of the shinkansen and you will end up being shitkansen.”). The most well thought out post is this heartfelt plea to Craig himself, Re: Is this CL TOkyo, doesn’t feel like it! (boston):
well other cities have got spsms, too. but just becuase the overall potings are so few in the tokyo site, it looks like a spam bulletin board. as you said, almost all of the tokyo postings are from japan-geeks in the states or spammers.
basically the japanese people’s english skill is limited, and they are not interested in posting ads in english, which, to them, means taking a risk of making grammartical mistakes. (which i don’t care about at all as you can tell) don’t think this country is same as other non-english speaking countries. japan is definitely one of the few countries where people strongly (very strongly) feel englishly-challenged.
craig, you’ve got take some actions to prevent spams and/or attract more japanese readers/posters. otherwise this site is going to die sooner or later. craig, you can’t just rely on month-to-mouth to promote this site in tokyo. a majority of english-speaking people in tokyo are japan-otaku whose japanese friends (mostly girlfriends) are not capable of reading/writing in english. but there are many other potential japanese CL users out there, and they probably don’t have any connections with CL users, or english speakers in general.
craig, you’ve got to reach out directly to real “japanese people” to spread this site in japan. please try to reach the japanese media and tell them this is a great site for those who want to “actually use/practice enligh”—reading and writing. learning english is always a hot issue there. always a lot of top-selling books in japan are related to how to communicate in english. craig, i’m sure, as a japanese, that is the only way to keep this tokyo site alive. i don’t want japan-otaku perverts take it over. i want this site to be a place where japanese people, for the first time, really overcome their negative obsessions about their english skill and fear of communicating in a foreign language… and eventually a place where many english learners enjoy english communication and feel confident in their language skill.
It’ll be very interesting to come back to this post in a few months, and then a year, to see how Tokyo Craigslist has evolved and what steps (if any) the usually hands off CL team has taken to change things.
Also I’d like to point out that I typed in manila.craigslist.org and for the first time there’s actually something there! I don’t know when they’re going to officially launch Manila Craigslist, but it’s up and running, so pass the word. I’ve long been wanting CL to come to Manila, Filipinos are incredibly social and increasingly netsavvy and it will be fascinating to see how quickly it picks up. How will the CL staff be able to deal with users who effortlessly, naturally codeswitch between English, Tagalog, swardspeak and street slang? How long till office IT departments start blocking CL at work, the way many of them block all IM clients and Friendster?