Video
I Rented a Japanese Girlfriend in Tokyo 🇯🇵
· 18 min · Watch on YouTube
I Rented a Japanese Girlfriend in Tokyo 🇯🇵
Harry books a date through Japan’s rent-a-girlfriend service — a real industry he links to the country’s loneliness epidemic — and spends a day in Tokyo with Erie, an architecture student who does the service as a side job. The Japanese-only booking site makes the process a guessing game. Their day: a rabbit-and-mouse café (the owl and dog cafés were fully booked), a train ride, browsing puppies at a pet shop, wagyu sushi in a curtained-booth Shinjuku restaurant — where a second rental girlfriend joins them — and batting cages, where Harry (a cricketer who has never played baseball) manages a hit. She teaches him Japanese phrases; he names her “Emily” at her request. Asked via Google Translate whether she’d do a second date unpaid, she says yes. Total damage: around $400 — “the most ridiculous expensive day I’ve ever had.”
Key moments
- [00:00] Booking on the Japanese-only rental site — profile quirks lost in translation, add-ons like hand-holding available.
- [01:33] Meeting at the train station; Harry notes most Japanese people wear masks because not doing so is seen as rude.
- [04:12] Owl and dog cafés both fully booked; they settle for a rabbit/mouse café — entry was about $20 (from video – unverified) for playing with the animals, no drink included.
- [07:00] Taking the train (cheaper than a taxi); Harry notes how well presented Japanese women are — makeup, jewellery, dress.
- [07:53] Pet-shop browsing — puppies including a hairless Sphynx-like cat; prices high (from video – unverified).
- [09:40] Wagyu sushi in Shinjuku, Harry’s first time: curtained private booths are normal in Japan, and he rates it some of the best sushi he’s had.
- [12:40] A second rental girlfriend joins the dinner.
- [14:43] Passing a protest with visibly more police than protesters — Harry’s read on the Japanese state’s tight control.
- [15:31] Batting cages (500 yen a go (from video – unverified)); Harry hits a “home run”.
- [16:54] The Google Translate second-date question — she says yes, no payment; the day cost about $400 all in, “still cheaper than having an actual girlfriend”.