Japanese Brides: Facts, Costs & Insights

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Mail Order Bride-US

18 min readMay 24, 2024

Though the term Japanese mail order bride may sound like an oxymoron to people who believe there are mail order brides from poor countries only, they actually exist. In this guide, I will explain how a man can meet a Japanese bride, how prices are formed, and how you can develop a good strategy and marry a Japanese woman.

❤️ Success rate: 75%
💳 Average cost of mail order bride: from $7,500
👩 Average age of foreign brides for marriage: 25
📱 Best site to find a Japanese mail order bride: SakuraDate
💔 Average divorce rate: 25%

Best Sites to Find Japanese Brides

The online dating market is diverse, so choosing the right site to meet Japanese women isn’t the easiest task. That’s why I recommend the best platforms with Japanese brides.

SakuraDate — best overall
EasternHoneys — best for a social media-like experience
TheLuckyDate — best for casual chatting
NaomiDate — best for interactive communication
OrchidRomance — best for mobile use

“If you’re looking for a win-win option, you can join SakuraDate. The registration is free, so you’ll see profiles of Japanese mail brides right after you sign up, there are free credits for newcomers and both free and paid features to contact women on the site. It’s a great platform for people seeking serious relationships & marriage, though. If you’re interested in something casual, it will hardly work for you.”

How to Find a Japanese Bride: Best Way to Meet Japanese Brides

There are many ways for Japanese women and men to meet partners and many ways for foreign singles to meet Japanese matches, but online dating has more advantages than any other option. Why? The answer is simple — it’s getting increasingly popular, and more and more Japanese singles choose it over any alternative ways to find a partner.

By 2027, the number of online dating users in Japan is expected to amount to nearly 8 million users. Moreover, in 2022, online dating has become the most common way for future newlyweds to first meet.

So, online dating is on the rise, and not all Japanese women prefer to date locally. Though the number of Japanese mail order brides can hardly compare to the number of brides from the Philippines or Thailand, over 500 Japanese citizens immigrate to the US to get married yearly.

Most Japanese mail order wives meet their husbands on niche websites designed exclusively to connect Asian or Japanese women for marriage with foreign singles. Such platforms may be very effective for multiple reasons — they connect you with Japanese women who have similar relationship goals and are ready to immigrate and offer special communication services to help members build authentic romantic relationships. Choosing such a site, however, isn’t an easy task, so I asked Andrew Hough to give some professional advice.

“The number of Japanese girls on niche Asian dating sites is lower than the number of Filipinas or even Chinese girls, and that’s true. Still, there are platforms with pretty good user bases for those who’d like to find a Japanese mail order bride or just a Japanese girlfriend:
SakuraDate — a new yet promising website to find a Japanese bride and start a serious relationship.
EasternHoneys — a reputable platform with Japanese girls, most of whom are interested in something serious rather than something casual.
TheLuckyDate — a niche dating site with a lot of members from Japan and swiping just like on Tinder.
You can learn more about each option, its features, and members, and then make the choice based on your own specific criteria.”

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Other Popular Ways to Find a Japanese Bride

There are some alternative ways for men to meet Japanese girls in and outside Japan, so if for some reason, niche Japanese dating sites don’t work for you, take a look at the options below.

🩷 Mainstream apps

Niche websites with Japanese mail order brides aren’t free, while most mainstream apps are, at least you’re not going to use special services besides messaging. Some of such apps have pretty many Japanese users, so the chance of meeting someone special is real.

Pros & cons of mainstream apps:

➕ Free to use

➕ Tens of millions of members

➖ No special services like translation

➖ Not all Japanese women are interested in dating a foreigner

📱 Social networking sites

This is another free way to meet Japanese girls. It takes enough patience and effort to meet someone on Instagram or Facebook, but it’s absolutely possible.

Pros & cons of social networking sites:

➕ Free to use

➕ You can learn a lot about every Japanese girl

➕ Convenient search

➖ Hard to find a single Japanese girl interested in a relationship

➖ Takes much courage to approach strangers

✈️ Trips to Japan

Trips or even immigration may work for those who love Japanese culture, can afford such vacations or life in the country, and a motivated to meet Japanese women in person, not online.

Pros & cons of trips to Japan:

➕ Integration into a Japanese culture

➕ Direct communication with Japanese women

➖ Too expensive for many singles

➖ Works only for men with remote jobs or good job opportunities in Japan

👩‍❤️‍👨 Searching for a Japanese girl in your home country

If you live in a city with a large Japanese community, you can try to find a Japanese bride online or offline, too.

Pros & cons of searching for a Japanese bride in a home country:

➕ No need to go to Japan

➕ No need to spend money (besides money on dates)

➖ Smaller dating pool

➖ Harder to find a marriage-minded Japanese girl

As you can see, all options have both pros and cons, and the question is what outweighs what for you personally. Consider your priorities and make a choice.

How to get a Japanese bride?

There’s no single algorithm that would help every man find a Japanese wife. However, every man can develop an effective strategy, and there are certain points it can be based on.

1. Find the right website

“It’s always about setting priorities, no exception. Ask yourself, would you like to find a Japanese wife and start a family, or would rather date a Japanese girl and see how it goes? What’s more important for you, the cost of dating services or a variety of advanced communication features? Yes, analysis of the dating market and options will take time, but it’s necessary to choose the right site that will be 100% effective for you personally.”

2. Learn everything about the system and your opportunities

“After you find a good site, learn everything about how it works. Don’t try to chat with someone right after you sign up. Look through profiles, find all the features, and ask yourself which of them seem more or less effective for you. That’s how you can avoid mistakes and pointless money loss at early stage of using the site.”

3. Make your own profile work

“Don’t expect your potential Japanese girlfriend not to be too picky. Most Japanese mai order brides who are looking for husbands abroad take it 100% seriously and will just skip low-effort profiles. Your personal page is your competitive advantage, so spend some time and effort to make it detailed enough.”

4. Search for the best matches

“There will be thousands of beautiful Japanese women on any good niche website, but don’t try to contact them. Focus on bios rather than photos of sexy Japanese women, set your priorities, and apply the right search filters. That’s how you’ll find your dream Japanese mail bride much faster and at a lower cost. After all, the fewer women you chat with, the cheaper the service.”

5. Communicate rationally

“As I’ve already noted, there will be multiple communication features. Just choose the ones that work best for you personally. Also, they all look better or worse at different stages of communication. Chat is great when you’re just saying hello to a stranger, while video chat is the king when it comes to building a deeper emotional connection with someone you already like. After you meet the right girl, just make it official online and go to meet her in real life, in Japan on any other third country.”

Japanese Bride Price

❗Men can’t literally mail order Japanese brides — there’s no way one can pay some amount of money and get a Japanese woman who’d agree to marry him and immigrate just because that would be ethically wrong and just illegal.

One can’t buy a Japanese wife, but it doesn’t mean that he can meet her without spending a penny. If you want to plan a budget, take a look at the major expenditures, consider your priorities, and estimate the approximate costs:

Online dating services — around $1,200 on average. That’s the money that a man is likely to spend on a niche mail order bride site or international dating site with Japanese women. In most cases, a user controls his spending, and most men spend $100 monthly, but again, the total price will depend on personal choices.
Trips — $3,000 for a two-week trip to Japan. The number of trips, your traveling style, duration of trips, all these things affect the price, too.
Visa — $1,200. This is the average cost of getting a K-1 visa for a foreign citizen who’s going to marry an American citizen.
Wedding — $50 to $30,000+. It can be as low as $50 (the average cost of getting a wedding license) or as high as $100,000 — in this case, everything depends on the couple.

So, the average cost of meeting, dating, and marrying a Japanese woman for a foreign man ranges from $8,500 to $10,000.

“Online dating expenses are an important part of a budget, so men looking for Japanese wives online should search for the most cost-effective solutions. Now, I can recommend the following sites that offer good value for money:
SakuraDate — a site where you get bonus credits, free videos to watch, and some generous discounts on your credits
EasternHoneys — a platform with a transparent pricing policy where you can claim bonus credits, have free instant access to accounts
OrchidRomance — a website where you’ll get a bonus to chat with a few girls for free, discounts, and special offers
These sites are mid-range platforms. Sakura date is even cheaper than most mail order bride sites, while EasternHoneys and OrchidRomance are not too expensive Asian dating sites where you’ll be notified about the exact cost of using every special feature.”

What else you should consider

“Sometimes, it’s a bride’s family who pays for a wedding. Sometimes, it’s the groom and sometimes, all share the expenses. But here’s one important thing you should consider — it’s crucially important for Japanese people not to lose face, so you should better not just say something like “I heard in Japan, a bride’s parents pay for a wedding.” First, it will be considered rude, and second, there are cases where families may take out huge loans just not to lose face. Ask your bride about this instead and then decide who and how will cover wedding expenses.”

How to save money

How to cut mail order bride costs? Take a look at these simple recommendations:

Watch your credits. You will meet a lot of Japanese ladies on any good site, but I’d recommend contacting only your best matches and avoiding spending too much on real gifts which are usually way more expensive compared to regular international online stores.
Meet in real life sooner if you are sure you met the one. Yes, trips are more expensive, but that’s how you can stop spending money on the dating site and will ensure that you met your future Japanese wife. In the end, it will help you spend less.
Consider alternative places to meet your Japanese bride besides Japan. You can go to a third country to enjoy your vacation and spend less on a trip to meet your Japanese girlfriend.

Generally speaking, I’d recommend avoiding making emotional choices and focusing on more rational steps you need to take to find your dream woman in Japan.

Success Stories

“I’m not going to lie, I was attracted to Japanese women because of their sex appeal. Now, when I’m married to a Japanese, I realize that these girls have much more to offer. My wife has a unique personality, though, and I’m definitely not going to say that she’s the way she is just because she’s from Japan but I’ve met her girlfriends and her mom and aunt, and I just see the similarities between them. My wife and her family and friends are super reserved. Everyone is dreaming about passion but believe me, passion goes away and the need to discuss things stays with you and your partner, so it just feels nice to be with someone who doesn’t get too emotional. My wife is also super-smart, and considering I was going to marry someone I was going to spend my life with, she was just a perfect match.”

“I always loved Japanese culture. I mean, real culture, not just anime. I went to Japan multiple time, and of course, I loved the idea of finding a Japanese wife. I didn’t meet her offline, though. My trips were too short, and there was too much to see in Japan, so I didn’t have that much time for communication with locals. That’s why I went online to meet Japanese brides and ended up marrying one of them in 3 years. I can’t say it was an easy road. I was on the wrong sites and met the wrong women, but I finally met someone truly special at SakuraDate. My wife impressed me immediately, just with a few first messages. I realized how intelligent and deep she was and couldn’t stop talking to her since then. We had a few hard moments as being in a long-distance relationship wasn’t easy but my immigration to Japan and a wedding ring solved all of them.”

Cons of Finding a Bride from Japan

The most serious possible drawback of finding a Japanese mail order bride is the cultural differences and barriers. Yes, Japanese society is often viewed as a more conservative one, and many local views, customs, and traditions are completely new to someone from the United States or another Western country, but the thing is success depends on the approach that you choose. If you’re ready to talk about your differences, listen to your partner, and compromise, you’ll easily handle all the potential problems before they result in any problems. Patience and mutual understanding are the keys to a happy family life, even if you’re going to date someone from a completely different cultural environment.

Japanese Bride Interview

Q: Fly, how did you become a mail order bride? What was your primary motivation to join the site?

A: I’m 51, I’m divorced, and I really think it’s time for me to start believing in love again. I’ve been in relationships after I divorced my ex-husbands, and some were great but it didn’t seem that any of my boyfriends were ready to start a family, and that’s what I wanted. I already have children, and I definitely don’t mind if my future husband has kids too. The bigger the family the better, but I just need to find someone special to spend life with.

Q: You say you are a restaurateur. Aren’t you afraid to lose your job in Japan if you find a foreign husband and need to immigrate?

A: I’m taking English lessons right now and I have 20➕ years of experience as a restaurateur in Japan so I don’t think I’ll experience any serious difficulty if I decide to find a job in the United States or another country where I can meet a guy. Moreover, though I used to be a career-driven woman, I think that now I’m ready to take a break from work. It depends on the circumstances, though, but all scenarios are acceptable to me.

Q: What do you think of the mail order bride stigma? Did you tell anyone you’re going to become a mail order bride, and what was the reaction?

A: Frankly, I even don’t feel like a Japanese mail order bride or something. I’m just a single woman looking for a boyfriend and a future husband. I just want to meet a foreigner because I like Western culture and love traveling — it’s just a win-win for me. So no, no social pressure or stigma. My friends were okay with my decision, and all the rest didn’t even need to know about it.

Q: If I may ask, wasn’t it easier to find a husband in Japan?

A: Yes and no. It’s easier because you can just meet, chat, and go on your first coffee date. In most cases, we both understand whether we should meet again or not. But it’s harder, too, if you’re serious about finding a husband. Men want to have fun and enjoy casual relationships sometimes, and I can’t blame them. I just have other goals. What I like about the idea of finding a foreign husband is that in my opinion, men join such sites where they are really ready to settle down. That also makes things easier for a marriage-minded woman.

Q: For how long have you been using the site? Have you met someone special already?

A: I hope so! I’ve been using the site for 3 months already and I met different men — funny, cute, not so cute, and not so funny. But I guess I found someone very attractive who has the same relationship goals as I do and shares my passion for sports, travel, and views of life at large. We didn’t discuss our relationship yet but I think that we may have a future together. Still, time will show.

Q: How can a man on the site attract you? And what are the things you are absolutely not into?

A: I don’t have a list of demands and criteria or something like that. I pretty much rely on my intuition, and we definitely should have something in common, something that will connect us at so many levels. I will reply if a guy seems nice and polite, and I’ll keep talking if he seems to express genuine interest in my personality. You know, sometimes, men don’t know what to say after they finish complimenting you, and that’s a problem. I block men who seem to be rude or interested just in discussing their sexual fantasies. There were not so many of them, but I met a few. That’s not why I’m here.

Why Do Japanese Women for Marriage Look for Foreign Husbands?

There are plenty of reasons why a Japanese woman may be looking for a foreign husband, but in most cases, particularly, in the case of Fly, it’s related to a strong desire and motivation to start a serious relationship and build a family. Younger women often note that they met many so-called “herbivore men” who consciously abandon the idea of having relationships, older women often see it as an easy way to find a marriage-minded guy. Japanese mail order brides have no need to get married to immigrate, but sometimes, they immigrate to get married.

Japanese Mail Order Bride Statistics

Here are some stats and facts on mail order bride Japanese and American husbands’ relationships that are worth knowing:

Korean (25.7%), American (16.7%), and Chinese (12.5%) husbands are the top 3 most popular foreign husbands among Japanese brides
In 2022, around 224 single Japanese women came to the US to get married (and there were 514 pre-Covid in 2019)
4.9% of Japanese women coming to marry in 2022 had a child
The average age difference between a Japanese bride and her American husband is 2–3 years, and guys are older
Japanese-American marriages are stronger, as only 20% end in divorce, compared to the US average, where half of unions break up

From the statistics, we can learn that Japanese beauties are into American men, and such couples last longer than local ones.

Japanese Mail Order Brides Scam

Unfortunately, the internet is not a perfectly safe place, and no dating site can guarantee 100% safety. And those are not just words. In fact, the FBI reported $6.8 million in losses to romance scams in 2021 alone. This is why it’s important to know what lies scammers tell to avoid being tricked when searching for the Japanese lady of your dreams.

⚠️ “I can’t meet you in person/video chat because…”

Scammers won’t ever meet you IRL or have a video chat with you. They will tell you all sorts of excuses. It’s because they are not who they are, and they are often not even local women.

How to avoid: Ask your potential Japanese mail-order wife for photos and videos, and never fly over without at least a few video calls.

⚠️ “Give me money for…”

Their main aim is your money, and they will ask for it as soon as they can. The reasons might be quite cruel, like helping a dying child or some similar reason that will make you feel sorry and send money. And scammers usually tell you how to pay and choose untraceable ways like wire transfers or money apps.

How to avoid: Never send money to strangers. And if you have established some level of trust and want to help or just make a present, choose traceable ways to send money.

⚠️ “I love you so much, and I want to fly over”

Many scammers use love bombing as a psychological tactic to get you hooked. They admire you a lot, shower you with compliments, and tell you that they love you almost the same day they start chatting with you. They can be even trickier and share a lot of personal details, stories, and photos (none of them are real). And when you are in that euphoria of attention, they tell you that they can fly over to see you IRL but need money for the tickets. And if you send money, they just disappear.

How to avoid: Don’t send money to a person you barely know. Also, mind what information you share, as some scammers are after your personal info.

Romance scams don’t happen to everyone, but better safe than sorry. Scammers are not afraid to play with your heartstrings to get what they want, so beware of such traps.

How to Bring a Japanese Bride to the US

Bringing your Japanese bride into the US is the least romantic part of your relationship, but it is pretty streamlined, especially if you stick to the following algorithm:

File Petition for Alien Fiance (Form I-129F) along with all the required papers, such as proof of your US citizenship, relationship evidence, etc.
Get your fiance to go through a medical examination and collect the necessary paperwork, i.e., passport, birth certificate, etc.
Have your Japanese bride file an Application for a Nonimmigrant Visa (Form DS-160).
Help your future wife arrange travel and shipping of her belongings to the US and wait for her to pass the port of entry inspection.
Get married within 90 days of your bride’s entry into the US. If you fail to get married within 90 days, your bride may be deported, but you can also file a Petition for an Alien Relative (Form I-130) if you’re a little late with the wedding ceremony.
File adjustment of status paperwork (Form I-485).
Help your Japanese wife file an Application for Employment Authorization (Form I-765) if she plans to work in the US.

For more details, check out the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Bureau of Consular Affairs websites.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for a mail order bride, Japanese dating sites are probably the last thing on your mind, and that’s a shame. Japanese girls lack the desperation of ladies from poor Asian countries while bringing the same exotic beauty, flawless manners, and cultural depth to their relationship. Besides, the risks of running into scammers and fakes are much lower. With millions of single Japanese women frequenting dating sites, finding your match should not be a problem if you put your mind to it.

FAQ

How to marry a Japanese girl as a foreigner?

To marry a Japanese girl, start by spending time getting to know each other. If you’re both ready to tie the knot, you’ll need to follow Japan’s marriage laws, which involve filing marriage registration at a local government office. Make sure all your documents are in order!

How to marry a Japanese woman?

Marrying a Japanese woman involves understanding her culture, online dating on the reputable sites, meetings IRP, and following the legal steps in Japan. This means registering your marriage at the local city office where your partner is registered.

Can I move to Japan if I marry a Japanese woman?

Yes, marrying a Japanese citizen can make you eligible for a spouse visa in Japan. This visa allows you to live and work there, but keep in mind you’ll need to renew it periodically.

What age do Japanese marry?

In Japan, many people choose to marry in their late twenties or early thirties, as they often prioritize education and careers first.

Can a Japanese marry a non-Japanese?

Absolutely! Japanese law allows Japanese citizens to marry non-Japanese nationals as long as all legal requirements are met.

What is the legal age gap in Japan?

There’s no specific law about age gaps in relationships in Japan. However, both parties need to be at least 18 years old, or 16 with parental consent, to get married.

Who pays for a Japanese wedding?

Traditionally, the cost of a Japanese wedding is often split between the two families. However, it varies greatly depending on individual family agreements and the scale of the wedding.

📍 Popular Mail Order Bride Countries:

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