Tokyo, Tokyo, make me a match!

Game of love: Participants playing a mystery-solving game at a matchmaking event organised by the Tokyo metropolitan government at Jindai Botanical Gardens in Tokyo. — Reuters

On an overcast day in Tokyo this week, three dozen men and women strolled through a botanical garden in groups of four, making awkward conversation as they searched for clues to a mystery-solving game – and a potential partner for life.

They are participants in one of the many matchmaking events the government of Japan’s capital has been hosting for years in an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to reverse declines in marriages and births.