Japanese geeks, commonly known as “otaku”, too shy to go out and meet a potential date face to face attended a special matchmaking event where everyone wore anime character masks to conceal their identities.

The event called “Ota-konkatsu” took place in Kuki City, north of Tokyo, a “holy place” among anime fans. The city is home to the Washinomiya Shrine, which was a location in the 2007 television adaptation of Kagami Yoshimizu’s manga Lucky Star, a very popular anime series, and since then Kuki City has become a sort-of otaku pilgrimage site. Data shows the direct economic effect of Lucky star on the city is estimated to be about 100 million yen (US$1.22 million) over the past five years. So it’s no wonder why this location was selected for an otaku-oriented matchmaking event. Ever since 2009, Japanese geeks have attended matchmaking events in Kuki City, hoping to find like-minded partners, but organizers thought they’d be more successful if participants could get over their excessive shyness. So at this latest even, everyone wore anime masks to conceal their identity.

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Getting a girl to go out to dinner with you isn’t as easy as some people think. Luckily, now there’s a DVD that allows single men to experience a dinner date, without having to convince a woman to go out with them. It’s called “Amateur Dinner Time – Let’s Eat Together! -, and it’s hilarious.

Maybe you’re too shy to ask a girl out, or maybe you’re just too cheap to take her to a restaurant. Whatever your reason, you’re probably a bit curious about what it must be like to have a pleasant conversation with an attractive girl, over dinner. Now, thanks to a series of original DVDs released by Japanese media company K-NETWORK, you can (sort of) interact with cute girls from in front of your TV screen. Each of the three Amateur Dinner Time DVDs features a number of attractive ladies as they sit across the table from the camera enjoying their meal and engaging in small talk. They probably don’t answer your every question, or laugh at your stupid kokes, but hey, you can’t have everything, right?

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He’s rich, single and most importantly, he’s not cheap, but despite all these qualities, 47-year-old Larry Greenfield can’t seem to find a suitable life partner. In the last 12 years he has spent around $65,000 on matchmaking services, has been on 250 blind dates, but he has yet to find a wife.

Larry sounds like a really unlucky guy, but according to the New York Post and Yahoo Shine, he’s apparently just really picky. “His problem is he’s a six and he wanted tens,” Maureen Tara Nelson, one of his former matchmakers told Shine. He would pick out his dates according to their photos and profiles, but at the end he’d always say there was no chemistry. The Post also paints out the retired Wall Street trader as very detail-oriented: he wants a woman who is slim, Jewish, funny, and a non-alpha (isn’t interested in a career). That’s apparently a very rare breed in New York. “He thinks because he’s wealthy he could get a beautiful women, but what he doesn’t realize is that beautiful women in New York are also already successful,” Nelson said.

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Dr Emil Chynn, a successful New York surgeon, has tired of traditional dating methods, so he’s offering tens of thousands of dollars to whoever helps him find the woman of his dreams.

So what does a person do in order to “outsource” the work of finding a suitable life partner? Well, the latest thing Dr. Chynn did was post an eye-catching personal ad in Columbia University’s alumni magazine. The advert in the Spring 2012 issue of the magazine reads: “LASEK SURGEON: Featured in NY Times/Wall Street Journal. Dartmouth, Columbia, Harvard, Emory, NYU degrees. Seeks smart, sweet, skinny SWF, 30, for marriage. $10,000 donation to your charity for intro!” The young surgeon says he chose that number because it’s what a good matchmaker in New York City charges, so he the money to charity, instead.

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Misstravel.com is a creative new website that hooks up beautiful women with rich men. It’s essentially a dating service, but only meant for the wealthy and the attractive. Once registered, good looking women can go on a trip with generous rich men, who will, of course, take care of all the expenses.

Registering at misstravel.com is absolutely free. You could sign up either as an Attractive Traveler or a Generous Traveler. The former obviously gets to travel for free and the latter pays for the trip. According to the website, an Attractive Traveler account is meant for “beautiful people who want to travel for free” and the Generous Traveler option is for “generous members who are seeking to travel with a beautiful companion, and who are willing to pay for all travel expenses.” The Generous Travelers also need to pay the website when they decide to make communication with an Attractive Traveler.

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Cinderella and Prince Charming re-uniting over a glass slipper has always been a popular fairy tale, the stuff that fantasies are made of. But now it might actually happen for real. Playing God-Mother here are Kuala Lumpur’s shoe retailer, Shoes, Shoes, Shoes and a dating company called Lunch Actually. “Buy a pair of shoes and get a free man!” is their slogan.

The scheme goes something like this – bachelors who sign up choose about 20 shoes they like from the Shoes, Shoes, Shoes collection. When a woman picks up a shoe labeled “Date Included” at the store, they get to go on a free date with the man who chose it too. So basically, you know you have one thing in common with your date – your taste in shoes. Of course, it’s understandable if the woman wants just the shoes and nothing to do with the date, so she can refuse. But there’s another incentive waiting for her on the date. The man will carry a Shoes, Shoes, Shoes discount cash voucher that he paid for himself, for the shoes that the woman bought. This could be anywhere between 10% to 100% of the total price. Some women might not want to miss out on that, in exchange for one date! Also, there’s no limit on the number of shoes a woman can purchase under this scheme.

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Remember Will Smith as Hitch, the guy who helps men woo women, for a living? Well, you can actually hire a similar service in real life. What’s even better is that your coach goes out with you, giving you practical advice and tips on dating.

“The Professional Wingman” is one such service run by Thomas Edwards. For $125  a night, you can get Edwards to go with you to social gatherings, posing as a friend of yours. He’ll then coach you through the evening, pointing out the flirtatious women, and also women who might be more compatible with your personality. In a prior meeting, you would establish with him exactly what kind of women you’re interested in, and also what stops you from approaching them with ease.

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90 days may sound like too short a time to find the perfect life partner. Liang Yali from China, believes otherwise. She claims to have hit upon a formula that will be able to help women find Mr. Right in just three months, with a money-back guarantee.

The service provided by Liang couldn’t have come at a better time. Many Chinese women are of late finding it very difficult to find a mate. In fact, the sixth national census found and reported that the unmarried men in Shanghai are far outnumbered by unmarried women. The surplus of women account for about 20% of the overall population of the city. In such a scenario, it seems impossible that any kind of service could tip the scales. After all, the numbers cannot be erased. However, Liang follows a formula of a different kind. Instead of providing regular matchmaking services, she focuses on the personalities of the women who take up her course.

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I know there’s nothing weird about babes stripping for husbands, but the title can be a bit misleading.

On a drizzling morning, a group of eight young girls, from Guangzhou, China, showed up near a local metro station, and started handing out fliers to male passers-by. There was nothing overly odd about them, apart from the masks covering their faces.

All of a sudden, music began playing, and the girls started dancing while holding signs that read stuff like “Marry me, please!” or “My mum’s been pestering me to get married. Marry me, please!” Their dance quickly turned into a striptease act, with the girls tossing off their clothes, all the way to their underwear.

The unusual even attracted over 100 curious onlookers, as well as several vehicles stopping by to check out what was going on. People were cheering, clapping or taken pictures, but their joy was short-lived, as the metro station staff quickly crashed the party.

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