I know it's not done that way in the US. I moved here a couple years after university. Part of the reason I stayed is that are much higher societal freedoms here than in the US, and dating was one of the reasons I wanted to stay here.

Ironically, I also wanted to stay because met my future ex-wife and I clearly had a secret desire for decades of legal battles over child visitation and custody...but that is a different story.

In the US I always felt like women (I'm hetero) would try to manipulate a potential date conversation so that I would be the one asking - but most likely that was just the kind of women I attracted back then. (i.e. the problem was me).