...and your own forehead.

I will not pretend, even after having been through one, to fully understand what a gokon is. It had been explained to us as a ritualized group blind date—usually organized by a couple either hesitant to have a first date on their own or worried about their bachelor and bachelorette friends. Each brings an even number of men and women to meet and talk. Whether the expectation was to facilitate hookups, long-term relationships, or just pleasant company was left unclear.

We arrived early at Tachimichiya—a basement izakaya, or beer hall, decorated with punk-rock posters—in the neighborhood of Daikanyama. In preparation for small talk, I'd downloaded a conversational-Japanese app to my iPhone, though it seemed to specialize solely in phrases along the lines of "I like to paint and sketch" and "Do you like pizza?" We were awaiting the arrival of Tatsuya Mizuno, a journalist and apparent expert in arranging _gokon_s. Where exactly that put him on the continuum between popular and pimp I could not quite pinpoint.

The door flew open and in walked Mizuno, followed by four women around 40, all in low-cut but otherwise demure dresses. At almost precisely the same moment, it dawned on the three of us that this was going to be as excruciating as any other blind date.

"I need to get drunk. Fast," said Chang, reaching for a bottle of soju.

Mizuno ushered the ladies over. He wore a Vandyke and a brown leather blazer. His voice sounded like it was being dragged out through five feet of gravel, a low, drawn-out growl that lent even his most innocent sentences a leering dirtiness. I nicknamed him the Goat.

"Thees is Haruka, Kyoko, Chie, and Yumiko," he growled as the women expertly slid in among us. Kyoko and Chie squeezed close on either side of Chang, who was on his third drink in as many minutes. "Now you ask each other questions," the Goat said, making it sound like something that might well end in pregnancy. Chang suddenly took an inordinate amount of interest in a Ramones poster on the wall behind him. He poured another drink.

"You are on television?" one of the girls asked Ansari. He allowed that he was.

"What program would I know about?"

"Have you seen Friends?"

"Yes!" all the girls said simultaneously.

"I played Chandler," said Ansari. "Indian Chandler."

The girls looked confused.

"Let's not talk about TV. Let's talk about movies," one said.

"Have you seen Pretty Woman?" asked Ansari.

The table filled up with plates: piles of sashimi, crisscrossed Jenga stacks of yakitori. The drinks kept flowing.

On my left was Yumiko. She wore a green drapey dress and had long hair that framed her oval face. Had she been to many _gokon_s? I asked. Oh, yes, she said. And what did she do for a living?

"I'm a Buddhist monk," she said earnestly.

"Okay," I said. She also had a boyfriend. Who was a mid-martial-arts fighter.

"But he's not a champion yet," she said, pulling up a picture on her phone.

"Looks a little small to me," I said.

"Oh yes," she said, kindly. "He is only six feet two inches."

Across the table, Haruka, the shyest of the group, peered up at Ansari through her bangs. "I am also an actress," she said in a tentative voice.

"Really? What do you do?"

"I am a model." She dug in her purse, came up with her phone, and showed him a picture. He stared at the phone for a moment and then passed it without comment to me and Chang. Sure enough, there was Haruka, several years younger, soaking wet, wearing a tiny, clinging tank top that barely covered her large breasts. She was looking at the camera with what could only be described as "gokon eyes."