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Forget space or the deep seas, when it comes to human exploration, dating is the real final frontier. You never know where you might find that special someone–it could be in a club, at school, or even on the train. But conventional wisdom–in Japan at least–says that women should avoid dating these three types of men: Band members, bartenders, and hair stylists (biyoushi, in Japanese).

Now, it’s easy to imagine why so many might believe these Three Bs might be filled with the very baddest of bad boys–after all, what’s sexier than a guitarist who can mix a drink and do your hair? But how do Japanese men in these professions feel about their reputations? Find out below!

Recently, one of the writers from our Japanese sister site Pouch sat down with some men working as one of the Three Bs and their responses weren’t exactly what we were expecting. It turns out that just because people think you’re a playboy, doesn’t automatically make you Don Draper.

guitar

Band members

First up, here’s what one guitarist who’s been playing for 25 years had to say:

I can kind of agree with it. If I had a daughter, and she wanted to date a band member or marry a musician, I would do everything in my power to stop it. To start with, band members are usually kind of lazy bums! So, a woman would have to support their dreams, take care of them, and not get upset about them mingling with female fans. If you have a girlfriend like that, it’s awesome, but that’s pretty rare! LOL! So to that extent, if the guy becomes a big artist, then he can give a girl whatever she wants, but…

So, at least in this case, conventional wisdom might hold up. Remember this, ladies: If he can play a mean guitar solo, you might not want to waste your time on him!

bartenders

Bartenders

Now this one seems like an even more obvious no-no than musicians. After all, bartenders spend all night slinging drinks and chatting up the clientele! Surely they’re smoother than half-melted ice cubes…

Yeah, we have lots of women as customers, and many people think we’re “popular” with the ladies. But just being a bartender doesn’t actually make you sexy, and it’s not like everyone feels like cheating anyway! So, if you ask whether or not I think it’s true that bartenders make bad boyfriends, I would say it’s not true, but I would imagine others would say it is true. Either way, our job involves handling alcohol, and girlfriends may not want to see their boyfriends showing other women a good time. If so, she just shouldn’t come to the bar!

So, maybe bartenders aren’t necessarily bad boyfriend material. Well, we suppose this is one of those cases where it just depends! But if you’re the jealous type, you might want to avoid swinging by when he’s at work.

barber

Hair stylists

To be honest, this one seems kind of strange at first. We doubt too many people feel very sexy in the middle of a cut-and-color! On the other hand, hair stylists are probably pretty good at talking to women and they do see a lot of ladies day in and day out. But what did our writer find out?

I’m sorry, but before we can even get to whether or not hair stylists make for bad boyfriends, I have to say that we don’t even have time to play around with women! LOL! We get to the salon at 10 am and stay open until after 8 pm, right? And then after that, we have lessons or have to take care of closing shop and so on. And then we get home really late. Even if I wanted to cheat, I’m working when most office workers have time off. I can barely get time to see a girlfriend I’m dating properly, so how could I make time to be messing around with someone else? Well, there are stylists who flirt with girls like hosts to get more appointments, I suppose.

Hmm…well, that brings us to another problem, doesn’t it? You might not have to worry about a guy working as one of the Three Bs cheating on you–but it sounds like you might not have much time to spend with him either!

One of the hardest things about dating can be finding time to hang out–imagine how much more difficult that would be if your boyfriend were working nights and weekends! Forget about cheating–how about just getting a chance to chat? That would be enough to put a strain on any relationship.

So, do you really need to avoid dating every musician, bartender, and stylist? Probably not, but it’s always a good idea to be aware of the difficulties that may be involved. At least you probably won’t have to worry about any of them getting fat though. They’ll be too busy running around keeping everyone entertained!

Images: Pouch, Wikipedia (1, 2), Twitter
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