TOKYO – Satoshi Fujita is not a good-looking man. He has oily skin, beady eyes, short legs and a boy-band wig to cover his balding head. But that hasn’t stopped him from becoming Japan’s most sought-after dating coach for geeks.
Fujita’s ‘Pickup School for Men Who Can’t Get Any’ teaches geeky, insecure men of all ages how to gain confidence, score dates and get laid — all based, he says, on a proprietary “science” he discovered after a decade of careful research.
“I always teach my students that sex comes first,” he says. “Then you figure out whether the woman is worth marrying later.”
The school is just one of many bizarre after-work coaching institutes in Japan. There are schools that specialize in everything from simple math problems to memory improvement. There are even schools for successful dating-by-text-message. Taking night classes is deeply ingrained in Japanese culture — starting in childhood, when parents enroll children in juku, or cram school.
Nanpa, or the act of picking up women, is one of the newer but more popular categories of cram schools in the country. There are at least half a dozen nanpa schools in the Tokyo area alone.
Some of Fujita’s classes take place in a classroom, but most of them are held on street corners to simulate real nanpa situations. Fujita estimates that he teaches more than a hundred students a month, with some classes — like How to Use Magic to Gain Popularity and How to Seduce Women — attracting dozens of students. Each class costs 30,000 yen ($280).
His students — electronics company executives, engineers who have little interaction with women except through online porn, and average-looking college geeks who need an extra oomph — seem happy with what they’re learning.
“Since joining Mr. Fujita’s school, I have had five successful relationships,” says Hachioji Robocop, a 27-year-old civil servant who has been taking the course since 2004. “I lost my virginity six months into the course, and now I can now communicate with women. I’m very grateful.”
Fujita opened up his first dating crash course for geeks in 2002. Today, he has written three self-help books for unpopular guys, and his techniques have been featured in magazines and television shows.
Through most of his 20s, Fujita was introverted and completely clueless about women. “It was so shocking when my hair started to fall out,” he says. “I was scared to look in the mirror and completely froze up when I talked to women.” For years, he hid behind his receding hairline, avoiding social events and wondering what it was like to be intimate with a girl.
Then, in the mid-1990s, he started studying the techniques of masterful pickup artists and charismatic celebrities in an effort to hone his own womanizing skills. He registered with a professional matchmaker, who started setting up dates, but things turned around only when Fujita bought his first wig at age 34.
In his book Zura Ga Kanojo Ni Bareta Toki (The Time My Girlfriend Discovered I Was Wearing a Wig), Fujita describes how his confidence soared after this slight change in appearance. He felt like a woman who had just gotten breast implants, he wrote.
He also learned that a few simple tricks can go a long way: Women like laughter, compliments and magic tricks. Using these concepts, he devised a proprietary “science” for picking up women that takes into consideration things like reading signals and timing.
After 10 years and 10 new wigs, he’d become so successful with women, he says, that he decided to quit his job and make dating his profession.
Among other tricks, Fujita’s method involves a deck of “psychoanalytic” cards that help him determine what kind of girl he has picked up.
He’s also got a bag of tricks — literally — that includes flaming wallets, talking ferrets and animated algae balls. Fujita asked Wired.com not to disclose anything more detailed, for fear of giving away his closely guarded trade secrets.
“This may seem ridiculous, but if you follow a specific equation, it really works,” he says.
One bit of advice Fujita was willing to dish out concerns online dating: It doesn’t work, he says.
“If you’re not tall and good-looking, or you don’t work at a top-rate company, then you can’t really score dates on a dating website,” he says.
Instead, “Picking up women on the streets is the best method for people who need miracles.”
Source: Wired Link Posted by drew. Filed under Weird World News
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