​It's a truth universally acknowledged that dating apps are the absolute worst. Although to be fair, the onus is not so much on the design of the apps themselves, but the general experience of online dating.

I've had the opportunity and great misfortune to try out more than a couple of the more popular dating apps in the US. I've shuffled the order of photos on Tinder, dusted off my reading lists for OKCupid and grappled with the gravity of soul-baring questions such as what's my favorite Disney movie on Hinge.

Before my initiation into Japanese dating apps, online dating for me was a world full of men showing off abs and baseball caps. It was also a world where phrases like "I like someone who doesn't take herself too seriously" and Myers-Briggs personality types were commonplace and the words "chill" and "adventure" reigned supreme.

Japanese dating apps are markedly different. On a purely visual level, the men on Japanese dating apps are more fully-clothed and don't seem to claim permanent residency on beaches. But it's not merely about pictures; the design of Japanese dating apps also differs from their American counterparts. From ranking profiles by their popularity to including one's blood type and birth order as profile information, there are many features of Japanese dating apps that set them apart from Tinder and Bumble.

Are Japanese dating apps doing something that American ones aren't? Have they managed to make meeting people online not a veritable war of attrition? Or is it just a different brand of recognizing that you might just spend the rest of your life alone? Naturally, there is only one way to find out.

Get Your IDs Ready

A fear of online scams seems to permeate most of the Japanese dating apps I saw. Although it's relatively easy for a person to register for an account — like American dating apps, you can link to most of the Japanese apps directly through your Facebook account — if you want to access certain essential functions, such as messaging another person, you have to provide photo identification. For Japanese people, that would likely entail uploading images of their driver's licenses or health insurance cards. For one of my Taiwanese friends who speaks Japanese fluently, that meant uploading a picture of her passport. And even if you do have a Facebook account, apps like Pairs require that you have at least 10 Facebook friends. Any number less than that invites suspicion that your Facebook account may be fraudulent.

This scrupulous procedure of verification speaks to the wariness with which dating apps are still regarded in Japan. Online dating has long had a shady history in Japan because of the rampancy of scams as well as the prevalence of "baishun," the practice of young girls selling sex to older men online. Safeguard systems such as registration via Facebook accounts may have helped alleviate the likelihood of being catfished, but all of the Japanese dating apps I've looked into still prefer to be more cautious with their requests for photo identification. Even PCMax, an app which encourages more of a sense of anonymity compared to the other apps — a large majority of PCMax users use avatars or obscured photos for their profiles — asks it users to upload identification so it can check the veracity of the user's alleged age.

The Questions Are Culturally Specific And Boy, Do They Go Into Detail

In the writing of one's profile, questions routine on American dating apps, questions that ask you to identify your ethnicity and religion, are far less common on Japanese dating apps. When it comes to religion, Japan's religious affiliations are comparatively less diverse than the US's, with the two religions, Shintoism and Buddhism, being most dominant in the country. And despite the heterogeneity of its ethnic makeup, there is a lack of dialogue regarding race in Japan. A unifying vision of racial harmony and homogeneity is often promulgated while racial discrimination within society is ignored.

Instead of questions about race and religious beliefs, Japanese dating apps have their own culturally-specific categories they want users to answer.

Blood type is a common one. While a majority of Americans don't know their blood type1, blood types are important in Japan, as they are perceived to be predictive of one's personality, much in the way that astrological signs are regarded in other cultures.

Another question that is absent from American dating apps but nearly ubiquitous on Japanese dating apps is birth order. Whereas in the US, I highly doubt that Americans will care whether I'm the eldest daughter or the baby in the family, birth order seems to hold a greater significance for Japanese people. For Japanese women looking for a potential partner, marrying a man who's the eldest son in the family can be both a blessing and a burden since in more traditional families, the eldest son inherits the bulk of his family's properties as well as the obligation to take care of his parents after they grow old.

There is an unanticipated degree of up-frontness when it comes to displaying information related to money. On several of the dating apps, for instance, users can choose to answer the question of who they think should pay for the first date — should it be the man, the person with the higher income or should it be split in half? And when it comes to information about income, almost every Japanese dating app I checked out allows you the option of showing your salary level. In the case of Omiai, you can even filter profiles by income brackets. In the field of occupations that the dating app With has its users fill out, there are choices that include "Working at a publicly-listed company" or "Working at a top 10 financial company," which signals to prospective dates your high-income level. The degree of openness regarding a user's economic status is something that I've never encountered before using American dating apps, most of which, with the exception of Match.com, avoid bringing wages into the equation.

But perhaps it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise that the questions on these dating apps would be this candid or comprehensive in scope. The wealth of profile information provided on these platforms helps Japanese users sidestep certain uncomfortable scenarios in online dating. For Japanese people, who are known for the discretion and indirectness in their culture, reading a potential date's answer to questions such as "Who do you think should pay for the first date?" can help lessen the awkwardness involved in navigating the rules of dating etiquette and prevent the possibility of being perceived as impolite. And for users who are looking for a partner that can provide them with financial security, Japanese dating apps offer them an easy way to gauge a person's financial earnings without having to ask prying questions out loud.

'If You Want To Know More About Me, You Can Read My Journal'

One of the most distinctive aspects of some of the dating apps I came across was its "diary" feature. Both PCMax and YouBride have a diary component that enables its users to post and read other people's status updates on a Twitter-like networking platform. The posts, which are usually short in length, range from diaristic documentation — one user, for instance, wrote "I stayed up all night playing Fortnite. Just woke up. Going to the hair salon now" — to more invitational messages, with users asking in their posts whether anyone was free to come out and hang out now.

The journal element of these two dating apps offers a rare and intimate prism into the psyches of its Japanese users. While the majority of diary entries focused on chronicling the details of everyday life — last week, when the east coast of the US was in the throes of a heat wave, many Japanese users were also posting about how stifling hot the day had been — some entries are more confessional and bittersweet. On PCMax, I saw a female user write in her journal, "I am so lonely. I just want a boyfriend that I can go to fireworks festivals with." And on YouBride, I read posts by users that exposed the raw nerve of uncertainty and insecurities underlying online dating. One male user journaled "I feel terrible. No one has matched with me so far. I wish I were more attractive. I'm feeling down now, but I'll try to improve myself." Another wrote "Today's my 10th day using this app. I've liked a few profiles, but no one has liked me back yet. Only 20 days left. I'm going to try to give this my very best."

It's A Big Popularity Contest Out There

One of my personal nightmares regarding online dating is probably finding out the level of desirability I am rated on the dating apps I use. Although there's no way of knowing how highly-rated one is when using Japanese dating apps, several apps provide the function of seeing how popular other profiles are. On Pairs, you can see the number of people that "liked" a person and the number is placed boldly in the corner of a user's profile. And on Omiai and With, you can filter profiles based on the level of their popularity.

It's not that American dating apps aren't collecting data on which users are considered more attractive or desirable. They are, and some have even leveraged their internal rating systems to either lure more users or more revenue. Tinder has Tinder Select, a members-only version of the platform that serves users deemed good-looking or a catch according to the Tinder Elo score, the app's algorithmic rating system. OKCupid A-List subscription, which seems to charge users differently according to multiple criteria — attractiveness included — allows its users to search through profiles by body type and degree of attractiveness.

What sets Japanese dating apps apart, however, is how accessible this information is to regular users. On With, for instance, you can filter profiles by several different criteria, two of which are the number of likes a profile has received and the amount of Facebook friends a person has. Despite the fact that this feature gave me pause, I can understand the ease and convenience it proffers users who don't have time to scroll through multiple profiles every day and who prefer seeing the profiles the app or other users recognize as the most "desirable."

Which Is Better, Japanese Or American Dating Apps?

When it comes to using Japanese and American dating apps, there's no clear victor for me as both have their merits and drawbacks. Having never used services such as OKCupid's A-List subscription, I'm not that comfortable with the search functions on some of the Japanese apps that allow users to filter profiles by their popularity. Not only does it make me feel bad for users that may be considered less attractive by conventional standards, but in some ways, knowledge of another user's ostensible popularity may also serve as a deterrent. If I see a profile that has already amassed a high number of likes, I might refrain from liking or messaging that person because of my awareness of the level of competition I would be facing. Knowing how popular a certain user is would most likely fuel my sense of inadequacy and hamstring me, rather than help me, in my usage of the app.

But that's just me. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would appreciate the usefulness of such functions. One of the components, however, that I enjoyed the most out of my experience with Japanese dating apps was the diary feature available on PCMax and YouBride. Different from most American dating apps, the "diaries" or status updates allow users, in my opinion, to gain a fuller and more rounded picture of the disposition of other users. While most profiles, barring changes you make to them, display a static version of a person's personality that's seemingly frozen at the time of writing, diary entries offer a more multifaceted and dynamic view into who that person might be like in real life. Even if it's just a gripe about how hot the weather is these days or a post that's waxing poetic about the trials of finding a partner in this grand cesspool that is online dating, I'm sure I would appreciate it greatly. I might still have a hard time finding that Mr. Right or that Mr. OK-He'll-Do on these apps, but hey, at least with features like that, I know that I'm far from alone.