My experience with dating in Japan (limited, although I did meet and marry my wife here in Japan) is that women are much more independent here than in the west.

My experience with dating in Japan (limited, although I did meet and marry my wife here in Japan) is that women are much more independent here than in the west. Obviously it's very much an individual thing, but I think culturally it's generally the case. Couples kind of go off separately and do their own thing and then meet back occasionally to recount their adventures. As a kind of extreme example, young women in Japan have absolutely no problem with the idea of going off on vacation without their boyfriend. They will go with a group of female friends, or even go off on their own. In the west it would be unheard of, I think. If you saw a woman vacationing alone, you would almost certainly assume she was single. This is not the case at all in Japan. People, in general, are also really guarded. It is said that you must have 3 faces: one that you show to everyone, one that you show to your closest friends and family and one that you show to only yourself. So that limits the kind of "closeness" that you can have. If "really getting to know someone" means knowing all their inner secrets and motivations... well, I think that is just incredibly unlikely to happen with Japanese people. I hesitate to say this, but I only found out that my wife was religious 3 years after we were married! It's not that we have a bad relationship at all, but it's just something that was hers alone and private. Such a thing would be unthinkable in the west. This is a difficult topic to discuss because it's again super cultural and there is a lot of "common knowledge" (i.e. things that you assume based on how you were brought up, but never really questioned). All of us have bits that are private. In the west, it's usually our deepest fears or things that we are ashamed about. We project an image of ourselves that shows us how we would like to be, rather than strictly the true image. All of us are, to one extent or another, messed up inside and if we projected that, then everybody would be upset. I tend to think of the guarded aspect of Japanese society to be less of a matter of withholding "the real you", but rather projecting the "you that matters to you most". My wife has kind of the opposite problem that you do. For example, if I'm afraid of something but struggle through my fears and succeed, I tend to share that with my wife. She thinks that's super strange. Why would I go to such a great effort to be courageous and then tell her that I'm afraid? In a kind of way, you are spoiling the work of art that is you by doing that. I think in the west we think, "Oh but you need to have someone to confide in or else you will be lonely". I think this is really the difference. Like I said, people here are more independent. I think it's just a cultural difference and the way they they were brought up. "Getting to know someone" is less about sharing your secrets and more about learning about them by observing them. YMMV.