Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

Author:Aziz Ansari [Ansari, Aziz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Humor, Nonfiction, Retail
ISBN: 9781594206276
Google: FgYbBQAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1594206279
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2015-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

INTERNATIONAL

INVESTIGATIONS

OF LOVE

When I decided to

write this book,

one of the things I really

wanted to explore was how

the different issues in modern

romance manifested

themselves in other countries.

My interest in this started one

night when I was doing stand-up in a small club in New

York. I was talking about

texting and I asked for a

volunteer who’d met

someone recently and had

been texting back and forth

with them. I read the back-and-forth messages of one

gentleman and made jokes

about how we were all dealing with some version of this nonsense.

I quickly noticed that one

woman seemed very puzzled.

I asked her why she looked so

bewildered, and she

explained that this was

something that just didn’t

happen in France, where she

was from. This kind of back-and-forth simply didn’t exist,

she claimed.

I asked her, “Okay, well, what would a guy in France text you, if you met him at a

bar?”

She said, “He would

write . . . ‘Fancy a fuck?’”

And I said, “Whoa. What

would you write back?”

She said, “I would write

yes or no depending on

whether I fancied one or not.”

I was stunned—that kind

of makes so much more

sense, right?

Internationally, there’s a

huge variety of dating

cultures that have their own

quirks and dilemmas. Our

interviews in Doha were

interesting and made me

excited about the possibilities

of researching dating in other

cultures. Obviously, we

couldn’t study all of them, so

Eric and I had to be very

selective about where we

went. After a lot of debate, the places we landed on were Paris, Tokyo, and Buenos

Aires.

The reason for Paris is

obvious. It’s the city of love,

blah, blah, blah. Also,

relationships in Paris are

similar to what we’d read

about in other European

countries, where dating as we

know it in America is not

really part of the culture.

People hang out in groups of friends, and if they want to start a relationship with

someone, they just do it. They

are also a bit more casual

about sex and have a different

attitude toward infidelity, as

we will see in the next

chapter.

Tokyo was the next place

I suggested. This was done

less in the interest of the book

and more in the interest of me

enjoying some delicious ramen. However, after discussing the idea with Eric,

we realized Tokyo was a

great place to go because

Japan is going through a

crisis of sorts. Marriage and

birthrates are in a huge

decline, many young people

are showing a lack of interest

in romance, and also, again, I

love ramen. It was clear

Tokyo was a great choice,

both for the book—and our tummies.*

While Japan is

experiencing a decline in

sexual interest, we also

wanted to see the other

extreme, so we went to

explore the romantically

aggressive culture of Buenos

Aires. There’s a good reason

that Buenos Aires is often

called the world’s best city

for dating. 1 PDA is rampant.

People are dancing in sweaty clubs until eight or nine in the morning. Sex is everywhere

you look.

So there’s our itinerary.

While we couldn’t go

everywhere, these places all

provided a uniquely

interesting take on modern

romance around the world.

Okay, let’s go. First stop,

Tokyo!

TOKYO:

THE LAND OF HERBIVORES

AND TENGAS

My initial thought was that

Tokyo would have a highly

active dating scene. It is a

booming metropolis,

throbbing with life and

energy, arguably even more

so than New York. You have

everything—the tastiest

restaurants, the coolest stores,

and the weirdest stuff that you can’t find anywhere else in the world. An entire video

arcade filled with nothing but

photo booths? Yep. A

vending machine that grows

and sells fresh heads of

lettuce? Yep. A restaurant

with a dinner show where

bikini-clad dancers ride in on

huge robots and tanks? What

else do you think goes down

at the Robot Restaurant in

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