Young Japanese professionals who find dating apps and office romances too much of a burden have started looking for partners on running courses. In South Korea, running crews are also rapidly emerging as a new venue for meeting people.
Running communities of workers in their 20s and 30s are spreading quickly around major running courses in Tokyo, including the Imperial Palace, Yoyogi Park and Komazawa Olympic Park, according to a Sept. 27 report by Nikkei MJ, a marketing trade publication.
Welme, a running community launched in May, draws as many as 50 participants to its Imperial Palace running events. It also organizes pickleball and Pilates sessions. Its stated purpose is fitness, but a considerable number of participants are there to meet potential partners.
Companies have joined the trend. HowTelevision, a job information site, groups five to 10 people with similar backgrounds in education and age for matchmaking runs around the Imperial Palace. The median annual salary among its app users is 8.91 million yen, with many working at foreign consulting firms and IT companies. The share of running event participants who said they wanted to meet their counterpart again was 10 percentage points higher than at conventional group dinners.
Behind the rise of running as a place to meet is fatigue with existing approaches to dating. The NLI Research Institute said that as dual-income households have become the norm, people increasingly seek partners with similar economic backgrounds.
Large corporations and financial firms are clustered near the Imperial Palace, raising the odds of meeting someone with a comparable job and income level. One-on-one matching apps can be draining when there is no chemistry, while running in a group allows people to grow closer naturally without deep conversation, participants say.
Korean Running Crews Become Meeting Grounds, Too
The same trend is visible in South Korea. With the country's running population reaching 10 million, running crews are evolving beyond simple exercise groups into a new platform for meeting people. In a recent Hankook Research survey, 72% of respondents said they prefer forming relationships with people who have a lot in common with them.
Recently, "running blind dates" that lead to matchmaking after finishing a marathon have also appeared. Experts say running-based encounters are rapidly replacing conventional blind-date culture because they let millennial and Gen Z workers, who value efficiency, confirm shared interests in a short time and build intimacy naturally.
