[Lonthego]

Are any people here on Mixi? (PM me yours if you are)
It's a Japanese social networking site, kind of like Facebook, it's not a dating site per se. However profiles are available for everyone to see and sift through as they please.

I've had it for like 6 years, when I'm in Japan I get a fair number of messages (~2-3 a week) from people interested in foreigners or foreign countries, a lot who want to meet up, 7/10 it's women, 2/10 gay men, and 1/10 disturbed male youth who think they are black. Some are definitely sketchy, and as Nyororin points out a lot are the types you should run from, but some have also resulted in great friendships and relationships. I'm 24 now though, and a good amount of girls my age in Japan, both online and off, are looking for marriage partners, and after two nasty incidents (1 from a girl I met online, 1 not) in the past year I make it ambiguously clear (is that even possible??) that I'm not into marriage. They will also back off a bit if you tell them you won't be in Japan for the long-term.

What surprised me at first about this is the open-mindedness of a lot of Japanese about meeting people online then in person. A lot of Japanese women do in fact regard it as dangerous, sketchy, desperate etc. but there's also a lot who are very interested in it, and not just the "Japanese men don't like me so I'm into foreigners" type. I daresay that Japanese are more open-minded about it than Americans would be about meeting foreigners in person they met online. Remember this isn't a dating site.

I should point out that speaking Japanese and knowing the cultural dos and donts is a huge part of it though. I almost never get messages in English. I think this closely relates to what spicytuna referring to, about a sense of security. This is regardless of whether it's online or not. A lot of Japanese have very conflicting desires; they want to experience "foreignness" whatever that may be, without leaving their safety bubbles, and while speaking Japanese. The ones you meet who try and speak English, and/or who actually go abroad, are in the extreme minority, but will be the extreme majority of who you meet if you just use English.

Anyways tl;dr Online relationships are very common in my opinion, though it is all relative. You will always be a foreigner BUT you can be both a foreigner AND someone who doesn't make people feel like they have to take large steps or effort to communicate and associate with you, whether through your personality, cultural know-hows, or language prowess (preferably all 3)