If you happen to be an over-45 male, looking a little tired, inclined to decline party invitations because you can't stand the hassle, comfortable in your own company and not really caring what other people think — so, the news is ALL good, at least in urban Japan. You are, or are extremely close to, what is known as a kareta oyaji (枯れたオヤジ, withered middle-age guy) — currently the underground popular label on the dating market. These days, young women have shifted their preference from the wakai (若い, young), kakkoii (格好いい, good-looking) and okanemochi (お金持ち, rich) — extremely rare for all these traits to co-exist in one man anyway — to the genki nai ojisan (元気無いおじさん, middle-age guy with no energy). And the women who know how to love and appreciate such gents are called kare-sen (カレセン), short for kareta oyaji senmon (枯れたオヤジ専門, special penchant for withered middle-age guys) and the trend is boosting the morale of ojisan all over the nation.
Sceptics say the fever is temporary. After all, there were the waves of gai-sen (外専, short for gaijin senmon 外人専門, or penchant for gaijin), followed by the weird ota-sen (オタ専, otaku senmon オタク専門, or penchant for nerds) and the equally incomprehensible debu-sen (デブ専, debu senmon, デブ専門, or penchant for overweight men). It seemed like the domestic skinny single male didn't stand much of a chance out there, and now this!
One of my male cousins, aged 31 and pining to get married, was complaining that the odds were dead set against futsū no otoko (普通の男, ordinary men) like him, whose outstanding trait is a fierce and blazing normality. Poor chap, his recent mantra (or wail) is: Ore no dokoga ikenaindayo! (俺のどこがいけないんだよ, What's wrong with me?) I told him the kare-sen phenomenon will fizzle out in a few years — by which time the futsuu-sen trend will surely be on the horizon.