This Japanese theme park lets you beat up fake bad guys

First dates can be awkward. Do you get there first or turn up fashionably late? Do you offer to pay for everything or go halves? Which classic novels do you pretend you’ve read, and do you bother to Wikipedia them before the date? How do you talk to another human being without revealing the full, horrifying depths of your neuroses and inadequacies?

But never fear, lads – there’s now a really easy way to impress someone on a date (at least if your date is at a very specific Japanese theme park). 

Hirakata Park, a theme park in Osaka, is now offering a package that allows hapless daters to beat up fake bad guys to impress their dates. Because what says "I am a viable sexual partner" more than beating someone up for completely spurious reasons?

It’s part of several “flash mob style” packages the park is offering: you can also defuse a fake bomb or intervene in a “desperate medical situation” where someone really needs a blood transfusion and you give it to them, both of which seem like...kind of risky things to fake? 

All you have to do is attend a class beforehand so you actually look like you know what you’re doing. 

What happened to just pretending to be interested in literally everything the person you’re on a date with is into even if you hate it and having to keep up the facade until the inevitable end of the relationship, eh?