Back in my University days, I filled my downtime between studying and pot smoking with work as a tech support monkey at the campus library. At the end of autumn quarter of my junior year, a number of coworkers expressed a desire to throw a tech support get-together to celebrate. I volunteered my apartment for the event. It made the most sense as I lived the closest to campus and had a bitchin’ pool table upon which billiards, beer pong, or flip cup could be enjoyed.

About 20 collegiate tech support flunkies descended upon my humble abode in clever t-shirts, scraggly facial hair, and all manner of running shoe. These guys came to party like they never actually had been to a party. The cheap vodka flowed like pee from a centenarian’s wang into red Solo cups, topped off with way too much orange juice.

Things started getting heated (for a computer geek party) so I invited my non-nerdy, slightly jockish neighbor over to watch the festivities.

“Dude, you have to check this out. Shit’s wild.”

Neighbor opens the door, I wave him over to the kitchen. He has to do the shoulder-first “excuse me” slide through a rousing debate on MTG deck building strategy. His face alternates between expressions of bewilderment and disgust. Upon reaching the kitchen counter, he suspiciously eyes the solitary, nearly full bottle of hard liquor, pours himself a drink and inquires, “…The fuck is going on here?”

“Work party. They’re raging on half a bottle of Smirnoff at the moment.”

“Goddamn, it’s a sausage fest in here.”

He was correct; there were probably 3 girls present at the most.

“But check it out; no one is even trying to talk to these girls. The ratio is effectively infinite!”

Thus began my pet concept of the effective ratio, the ratio of game-active guys and eligible girls. Always try to determine the effective ratio behind the absolute ratio when estimating whether a party/city/country will be worth your time. Later on in the evening, my notoriously unskilled roommate joined us and had the time of his life monopolizing the attention of the few girls in attendance.

Let’s be honest here, as a single man with functioning genitals, availability of puss is a major factor in most of my (previously unconscious, but now mostly conscious) decisions. Los Angeles has beautiful women by the truckload, but these women have a smorgasbord of quality men to choose from any time they step out into the city. Contrast that with the women of Russia, who, by most accounts, have to compete with each other over a smaller pool of eligible bachelors.

Thankfully, me-before-game made the excellent decision of moving to Tokyo, which I submit has the highest effective ratio of any first world city.

The men of present-day Japan overwhelmingly self-identify as Herbivore men, i.e., sexually passive twats. From the Wikipedia article:

“ As of September 2010, 36% of Japanese men between the ages of 16 and 19 perceived themselves in this way. Additionally, two surveys of single men in their 20s and 30s found that 61% and 70%, respectively, considered themselves grass-eating men.”

Think about that: two-thirds of the men in one of the largest metropolises IN THE WORLD aren’t even trying to participate in the race for the gash. Now, factor in the staggering amount of slim, eligible women and you’ve got a sky-high effective ratio. In other words, this is a market imbalance just begging to be exploited by adventurous men with the skills to do so.

For more on what those skills are, stay tuned for my future post, “The White God is Dead”.