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How many dates does it take for a first kiss in Japan?
The answer, according to an online poll, is "I have never gone on a date or kissed before."
The lucky man has actually been on one of these rare things called "dates" -- a practice of courtship common in the 20th century.An article on Livedoor tries to discover the magic number for "How many dates until a couple's first kiss?" First they look at a COBS ONLINE survey of 141 men, where the most common answer at 28.2% was "the third date." That seems like a reasonable response, although a bit on the conservative side.
A survey on BBS 2ch, however, tried to replicate the study and got a very, very different result. After collecting answers to the question from 2000 people, the top result was "I have never kissed nor dated" at 39.5%. Yes, almost 40% of the sample seemed to have no romantic experience with the opposite sex. And on top of that some of the commenters wrote things like "Stop doing these polls. They depress me."
This whole exercise shows the inherent danger of using the Internet to poll Japanese tastes. As we can see, the Internet in Japan (or at least 2ch) is predominantly used by the otaku nerd community, who have shown a historical resistance to real-life interaction with the opposite sex. So polling them isn't really about learning something but just reminding everyone -- including the otaku themselves -- that yes, they live somewhat sad, lonely lives deprived of dating, kissing and possibly even hugging. Never has a questionnaire ever been such a punch in the gut to those surveyed.
