I am tottering my way down two flights of grimy stairs to a basement curry restaurant — the kind of place that only promises a good time if you’re already five drinks in.
“Table one,” I tell the staff. They mutter among themselves and seat me at a table for one.
It’s quite a funny mix-up given that I’m on a mission to connect with other people. Fortunately, the confusion is quickly resolved, and I find myself seated at a table of complete strangers, entirely as intended.
We are a diverse group of three solo travelers and four locals, hailing from Japan, Australia, France, India, Spain and the U.K. It takes a while before someone addresses the elephant in the room: The date is Wednesday, Nov. 6, and a silent but extremely large TV screen is broadcasting the results of the U.S. election above our heads. A glance upward inevitably reveals Donald Trump as the uninvited guest at our table. As a group of strangers trying to make friends, the setting couldn’t have been more comically awkward — politics, along with money and religion, are not topics for initial polite small talk.
A chance encounter
How did I find myself at a dinner with complete strangers? Well, a few weeks earlier, my social media feeds became flooded with ads for an app called Timeleft, pushing slogans such as “Life’s too short for solo dinners” and “Find your tribe,” and reinforced by photos of gleeful stock models clearly having the best night ever.
I was being encouraged to sign up for this brand-new service, which is based on a simple concept: Every Wednesday, attend a dinner with strangers matched via algorithm.
Timeleft is the brainchild of French entrepreneur Maxime Barbier, whose previous digital efforts included a service that matched people based on their “bucket lists,” meaning all the things they want to do with their time left on the planet.
After several incarnations, including an attempt at building a dating app based on mutual dreams, Barbier teamed up with his former marketing director, Adrien de Oliveira, and the two refashioned Timeleft as a service that tries to foster genuine human connections centered around real-life experiences. Its goal is admirable, the tagline reading, “Every Wednesday, we fight big-city loneliness. One dinner at a time.”
Since its launch in 2022, the app has gradually spread and, at the time of writing, operates in 65 countries worldwide. It reached Japan in October, with dinners held in six cities: Tokyo, Nagoya, Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka and Fukuoka.
I was curious as to how the concept would work in Tokyo, my home for more than a decade now. I’ve never had any trouble making friends here, but keeping them is a different matter. A linguistic and cultural gap in my earlier years meant I developed a larger number of expat friends, who invariably move to other countries. I could only imagine how valuable this service might be for people new to the capital, but the question remained: Is the algorithm as good as advertised?
Given that more than 50% of couples in the United States now meet online, and around a quarter of married couples in Japan in their 20s met through dating apps, Timeleft’s promise of “connection” taps into broader social trends looking to satisfy a real need.
Additionally, there are the other ills of modern-day city life — namely the alienation that can come with living in a place with a lot of people. The Greater Tokyo Area counted 41 million residents this year.
Personally, I have a solid crew around me, however the daily grind can sometimes get a little prosaic and simply commuting from point A to point B doesn’t allow for much human interaction. The idea of a new experience, dining with unknown individuals in an unknown location, was very enticing. As a self-professed extrovert, I couldn’t resist the idea; my thumb slipped and clicked on an ad, and my adventure began.
Signing up
To get the ball rolling, I went to the Timeleft website and was asked to fill in a short personality test. The questions ranged from the banal (“Are you a cat or a dog person?”) to the more probing (“Are your opinions usually guided by logic and facts or emotions or feelings?”). Next, I was told a table had been successfully found for my city of choice; I simply had to pick an upcoming Wednesday.
Of course, nothing in life comes for free, even genuine human connection. Users have a choice of a one-off dinner (priced at ¥1,490 for a seat, meal not included) or a subscription for one, three or six months. After completing the payment, I was asked what languages I’d be willing to speak at dinner (English or Japanese) and to select my dietary preferences.
With the sign-up complete, all that remained was suspense, which Timeleft builds by dropping small tidbits of information on the participants ahead of the dinner — their nationalities, the industries they work in, their star signs — and, the morning of the meetup, the name of the restaurant where the event will take place. It then promises a “game” that will only be accessible once dinner begins.
Dinner is served
So that is how I found myself in a basement restaurant with six strangers, slightly sceptical but definitely intrigued.
My group for the night consists of seven guests instead of the advertised six, which is a wonderful surprise nevertheless, and initially they seem engaging, friendly and clearly here to enjoy themselves. We’re a diverse group who hail from all walks of life: an entrepreneur developing an AI tool for Japanese physicians sits next to a travel book writer; a guy in finance next to a tour guide for the ultra-rich.
I turn to chat to a gentleman who works on evaluating supply chain technology. I notice him wince at the TV screen above my head, opening the door to a collective laugh at how we all just want to unplug the damn thing. Miraculously, no one continues to talk about politics. Maybe we all answered the “Don’t care to talk about politics” option on the personality test and the algorithm is really doing its job.
Timeleft’s rollout in Tokyo, however, is clearly in its early stages. The choice of restaurant was so bad that one participant confessed he had considered canceling, dismayed by the selection of a low-quality, inauthentic Indian curry spot. As a food writer and general glutton I sympathize — a bad meal can ruin my entire week. So, after an hour of suffering, I lead an insurgency. Directing us to a nearby izakaya (traditional Japanese pub), the seven of us cram in and continue the dinner conversation.
Timeleft offers the option of different dining budgets in other countries, but I suspect a lack of users in Tokyo prevents this option from being viable (alongside an extreme lack of establishments that can cater to diverse dietary requirements).
As for the promised dinner “game,” it turns out to be nothing more than a selection of conversation starters. “What is the worst chat-up line you’ve ever heard or used?” proves to be a fun one, but when “What’s your favorite day of the week?” pops up, we discard our phones in disgust.
The question about chat-up lines tugs at a niggling thought I’ve been having about the service, though: Is Timeleft a friendship app or a stealth dating tool? I can’t help but note that the group consists of five men, none of whom explicitly had disclosed their relationship status during our conversation, whereas the other woman in the group and myself had both mentioned we were in relationships.
“But they market Timeleft differently to men and women,” pipes up a serial Timelefter from London in our group. “It’s promoted as a dating app for guys.”
Sure enough, a few days later, after beginning research for this piece, I come across a Timeleft ad that has several dating app options crossed out: “Met on Tinder. Met on Bumble. Met on Hinge. Met over a unique dinner.”
Ambiguity is clearly a strategy for Timeleft, and it’s a good one. The experience can be what you want it to be. It’s about making human connections that can develop in various directions and, in actuality, often differently from how you would expect.
In a world that seems to have a scarcity of connection and spontaneity, Timeleft stays true to its original mission and made me think about the actual time we have left —in Japan or on this Earth — and how we choose to spend it.
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