As matchmaking endeavors go, this has to be one of the weirder ones.
Wealthy Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa announced on Sunday that he’s searching for a significant other to accompany him on a trip to the moon in 2023.
The moon mission is being organized by SpaceX. Maezawa has already been unveiled by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — another man with a knack for self-promotion — as the first paying passenger for the company’s planned lunar mission.
“Why not be the ‘first woman’ to travel to the moon?” Maezawa tweeted at the weekend, together with a link offering more details about the proposition.
It takes you to a page set up by Abema TV, a Japanese streaming service, which plans to turn his search for a lifelong partner into an entertaining television show. Or a “serious matchmaking documentary,” as Abema TV prefers to describe it.
“Yusaku Maezawa looks for a female partner to go to the moon with him,” the website proclaims, adding that he wants to make the trip “with a special someone.”
World peace advocate
Maezawa, who last year sold his online fashion company Zozo for around $3.7 billion, is looking for a woman with a “bright personality” and who is “always positive.” She should also be “someone who wishes for world peace,” and, of course, “be interested in going into space.”
In 2018, Elon Musk announced Maezawa as SpaceX’s first paying passenger after the Japanese entrepreneur agreed to cough up an undisclosed sum (read: a lot of money) for a fly-by of the moon.
On Abema TV’s webpage, Maezawa says that at 44, he’s decided to restart his life. “As feelings of loneliness and emptiness slowly begin to surge upon me, there’s one thing that I think about: Continuing to love one woman. While it’s something that is taken for granted by everyone, it’s something that I haven’t quite been able to do until now … I want to find a ‘life partner.’ With that future partner of mine, I want to shout our love and world peace from outer space.”
It’s not yet clear if it’ll only be the two of them stepping aboard the spacecraft in 2023 , or if the mission will also include the eight artists that Maezawa originally talked about taking with him.
According to the schedule for the matchmaking show, applicants have until Friday, January 17 to put themselves forward. Then, later this month, Maezawa will select potential partners for matchmaking dates that will take place in February. The following month there will be a round of “special dates getting to know Yusaku Maezawa,” with a final decision expected at the end of March 2020. And then? Well, a very long wait to see if the trip actually takes place.