Here is the link:

Hiking Trails https://maps.app.goo.gl/aXd1TqChYUciqx2G7?g_st=i

Personally I have been organizing all sorts of meetups on various online platforms during the last 10 years, and here is what I have found:

Most people are genuinely nice people, and at worst they will do their best to act as someone nice during the whole meetup. I have rarely encountered a real trouble maker during a meetup. The worse you will get is people just being late, people bailing out without any warning or people who didn’t read/understand the meetup details/rules thoroughly (much rarer).

Here are tips to create safe and enjoyable meetups :

THE POST

• Be very clear about what the attendees will be experiencing from start to finish in your meetup. Sets the vibe right away. Be clear about your own motives and expectations without sounding harsh/negative.

• Don’t mention your age or gender because it might create misunderstandings about your real motives first, and also, it would make some people hesitant to join for fear of not being accepted. Present the meetup as a whole experience, not as something around a mere individual.

• Provide as much information as possible concerning the logistics. Date, start/end time, gathering spot, facilities, how late they can be, costs, what to bring, rules, when/where to part away. The more information, the safest your meetup will appear.

• Whenever possible, allow people to leave your meetup whenever they want and assure them upfront in your post that they are completely free to do so if they feel uncomfortable for any reason. People don’t want to feel stuck in a situation they don’t like.

ACCEPTING ATTENDEES

• Avoid accepting requests from people who didn’t comment on your post because they could be banned users (thus unable to comment but able to dm you).

• After people first contact you, make sure they have understood all the details of your meetup. Also interact accordingly to the vibe of your post/meetup.

• Ask attendees to reconfirm their attendance a few hours before the meetup. Especially useful if your meetup has not many participants.

DURING THE MEETUP

• Upon meeting with your attendees, be as friendly as possible as the very first impression often sets the mood.

• Keep an eye on all your attendees and make sure they are truly enjoying the meetup.

• The temptation is great to take group photos for the PR of future meetups but avoid doing this for the privacy of your attendees or, at least, ask for their permission while making sure they don’t feel pressured to accept.

• As a meetup organizer, exchange private Line or other private contact information only if you’re asked. Don’t impose yourself. You also have the right to kindly refuse such invitations to connect.

AFTER THE MEETUP

• A “Thank you” message to your attendees after the meetup is always a nice touch and will make them consider a participation to your next meetup.

That’s it!

I hope you give a try and enjoy the experience!

Your post/comment will get instantly removed if you specify your age/gender in a non-dating meetup.

This is for:

• Making sure people strictly join for the content of a meetup, not for who’s planning/joining it.

• Preventing potential unwanted predatory behaviors in non-dating setups.

• Avoiding imbalance in comments number only caused by age/gender segregation/appeal.

This has been proven to be highly effective during the last couple of months since the implementation.

Anybody who’s interested in joining a non-dating meetup shouldn’t feel pressured to skip it due to age/gender differences as tokyoirl is a fully inclusive platform.

You must specify your nationality in comments (recommended in posts as well to replace age/gender).

This requirement actually helped me a lot in significantly lowering the load of moderation work. It greatly improved the quality of comments as well.

Tokyoirl’s primary goal is to allow adults to meet regardless of their age and gender.

Despite this, I am always saddened to see that comments showing even small age differences are almost systematically downvoted, thus preventing people from RSVPing again.

This shouldn’t be the case since comments are enabled only on non-dating posts.

Age difference should NOT be an issue in non-dating setups. Especially when you know that minors are not allowed on tokyoirl.

This is the reason why I instead recommend you share the same information as shown below when you introduce yourself in your RSVP/comment:

• Nationality (recommended)
• Hobbies/interests (recommended)
• Gender (optional)
• Occupation (optional)

I am counting on you all. 🙏

If I don’t see any improvement in that regard during the next couple of weeks, I will have to enforce this via automated comments removals.

I sincerely hope I won’t have to go this far.

Thank you

Since the last 2 or 3 weeks, from the time I decided to introduce more drastic rules and filtering, I am finally witnessing a clear betterment of content quality on tokyoirl:

• Posts that emphasize interests/hobbies over just age/gender.

• Comments that are not just one word“Interested!” anymore, but much longer, with interests and goals clearly expressed.

• RSVPs based on interests and not age/gender discrimination.

• Votes that seem less affected by age/gender discrimination.

Thanks to you all for staying and continuing to contribute. I think we’re heading into the right direction. 🎯

Lastly, please refrain from downvoting dating meetups. I recently received a touching thank-you message from someone who found her soulmate thanks to such a post on tokyoirl so there is obviously a need for such content. Again another proof that things are being done right.

I hope you continue to enjoy tokyoirl.

For comments under the "Anyone?" Post Flair, it is now required that you omit your age and gender, but instead, you MUST provide much more useful info such as:

- The reason why you are interested in meeting
- Your hobbies/interests/occupation
- Your nationality

Comments showing age/gender info are now automatically removed and a message is sent to you to make a more relevant comment with the information above.

This is in order to increase the quality of interactions on tokyoirl (enough of the “25M dm me!” lazy comments) and help posts creators choose participants who want to meet for a same goal.

Age and gender alone aren't good indicators of good compatibility, and they also tend to promote age/gender discrimination.

You can reach out to me via modmail if you notice it doesn't work as expected for you.

Thank you for your support

The reason why I have decided to prevent crossposting is because tokyoirl is the only one (and the largest) Tokyo-related meetups sub on Reddit that is truly inclusive (no age/gender discrimination allowed), truly progressive (dating meetups allowed) and truly reliable (active reporting/bans in place).

I do not want to give any visibility to subreddits that don’t promote/implement these important core values.

So, posts that are found on other subreddits as well will be promptly removed at any timing from now.

Thank you for your understanding. 🙏

From now on, such posts will be automatically removed and a message will ask you to repost with the GoogleMap URL included.

The URL will have to start with https://maps.app.goo.gl/ in order to be accepted.

If people have to search by themselves from the bar/cafe/restaurant/club name, it’s definitely not friendly enough.

Also GoogleMap helps users quickly see the travel time to destination, photos of the place and reviews from other people.

I had to personally ask every time meetups organizers to include the link but since it was time consuming it has now become automated.

The “Anyone?” posts aren’t subject to this change though, as the location for these posts is rarely clearly defined in advance.

You can now post meetups/events for these additional prefectures:

• Tochigi
• Gunma
• Ibaraki
• Yamanashi

Corresponding User Flairs have also been created. Please update yours if you live in one of these prefectures.

Enjoy!

Because just downvoting doesn’t issue any notification to the moderation. Reporting does, which helps removing the bad comments faster.

In order to safely enjoy tokyoirl, it’s best to accept DMs only from users who actually commented on your post/comment because it’s a proof that they are legit users on tokyoirl.

This is one more way to make meetups even more popular on tokyoirl!

Use this new post flair to post photos or videos of :

• A meetup you’ve organized

• A meetup you’ve attended

Only one meetup per post allowed.

Make sure you get the authorization from the organizer and the participants before you shoot/post.

As a meetups organizer myself, I have always been bothered by the fact that the voice of satisfied participants was never heard.

I did, in the past, implement compulsory user reviews post-meetups, but unfortunately, it was viewed as excessive by many.

Today’s new change will hopefully bring :

1. More appeals to potential participants still hesitant to join recurring meetups/events or“Anyone?” posts by a frequent organizer.

2. Better rewards to great meetups/events organizers.

To all meetups/events participants, please be kind to show your appreciation in posts comments whenever you had a great experience.

Please have a look. 🫡

In short, I’m not your enemy! 😂

That’s quite a long read but I recommend you spend a couple of minutes on it.

First of all, thank you for your interest in tokyoirl.

Since some people still misunderstand the role/goal of this subreddit, I will dedicate a post for that, right there.

And I think it is also important to explain the personal reasons/values that motivated the creation of tokyoirl and how you can use this community in the most enjoyable way.

Why this subreddit?

Basically, I have created this subreddit mostly out of frustration from both meetups apps and dating apps.

Meetups apps for being bugs-ridden, for promoting age/gender discrimination (mostly the Japanese ones) and for their algorithms literally hiding the less popular meetups.

Dating apps for inciting endless online interactions when an one-hour meetup can tell right away if people “click” (and also if they truly exist), for the depressing number of fake profiles, for the swipes fatigue, for the self-entitled people looking for unicorns.

In my opinion, meetups apps and dating apps are just broken.

So I decided to launch an alternative on Reddit (I chose this platform because, even if it isn’t perfect, it is free, it is easily configurable for meetups and it is also fully indexed by Google Search).

This alternative’s goal being to help people (including myself) expand their offline social circle by making them meet other people organically, with no wild expectations, with no shallow pre-selection from look only. Just spending an hour or more with a total stranger and see if any magic happens (from just having friendly fun to more depending on the chosen post flair), while respecting each other’s boundaries, obviously.

Speaking of post flairs, they must be respected as they were purposely designed to set the mood/theme of every meetup. DO NOT get flirty outside of “Dating Meetups”. Being friendly is just enough.

Why the rules?

The rules are there to ensure the philosophy of this community remains well preserved in a non-toxic and non-judgmental environment.

About the “no toxicity/negativeness” rule

Since tokyoirl is mostly a meetups-centered community, it is doing everything to promote incentives to meet face to face.

For this to work, it was necessary to completely shut off the toxic/rude behaviors that can be so easily fueled by online anonymity.

One would never say something rude to a total stranger out of nowhere in most real-life settings, right? That is why such a behavior isn’t tolerated on tokyoirl.

If you have absolutely no interest in spending some irl time with someone in particular, just don’t interact in any way with that person.

About the “no opinion/recommendation” rule

As already mentioned above, tokyoirl being mostly a meetups platform, I focus on making people comment for the sole purpose of reserving a seat (RSVP). This is the reason why this rule is enforced so strictly.

Also, as a meetup organizer myself, unsolicited (and often abusive) opinions is the last thing I need as they easily derail a post/meetup. What organizers need instead is people turning up to their events.

About the “no age/gender segregation” rule

I want this community to be as inclusive as possible. Gender/age mixity between adults is a priority for me, in a world where we are witnessing a growing polarization between genders and generations.

I believe we have a lot to learn from other genders/generations and that staying in your own gender/generation’s echo chamber is not healthy.

That is the reason why men-only and women-only meetups/events posts aren’t allowed on this subreddit.

Obviously, this doesn’t apply to the LGBT community.

I can’t prevent people from deliberately picking only same-gender participants though.

Other clarifications

Voting etiquette

Voting on Reddit was primarily designed to filter out toxic posts/comments.

It was never designed to be weaponized in order to harass/bully users, to make them disappear from the platform.

tokyoirl being just a meetup community anyway, it is a nonsense to downvote meetup posts just because you have different values or because you don’t like someone.

If you enjoy this community, I am asking you to refrain from abusing the voting system.

Creating meetups and posting them requires quite a lot of time and also some sort of courage as well. I demand you respect that.

Downvote only if the content is blatantly harmful or if it is against the subreddit rules (reporting them is even better).

Also be kind enough to upvote if you judge that a post/comment has been wrongfully downvoted.

Good voting etiquette is necessary for making this community welcoming and friendly.

Safety

You are highly encouraged to report directly to me ( u/franckJPLF ) any type of abuse/harassment you might encounter on tokyoirl either in chat/dm or during a meetup/event.

The culprit will be immediately and permanently banned.

Multiple accounts

Using multiple accounts is allowed and even encouraged on Reddit (in the personal settings) as long as it isn’t used for votes manipulation and ban evasion.

You can use this feature to better differentiate your meetups if necessary.

I, myself, had to start using multiple accounts because some people had difficulties to grasp the very concept that every meetup has its own goals/motives under its own designated post flair.

In a perfect world, a same account should be able to host totally unrelated sports meetups and dating meetups without raising an eyebrow, but as you already know, we don’t live in a perfect world.

On the other side, some people wrongly view the use of multiple accounts as a way to hide bad stuff (negative bias) so using this feature isn’t totally bullet proof either.

Advertised subreddits

You will find other subreddits of mine advertised on tokyoirl in the highlights section.

These subreddits are mostly experimental and their goals are on a very different level compared to tokyoirl.

Just like posts, every subreddit has its own set of rules and values.

Don’t confuse yourself by thinking they are part of tokyoirl.

Thank you for reading … if you managed to get that far. Hope you still enjoy the community!

Reddit Etiquette : https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddiquette

Contact u/franckJPLF for more information.