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+--- Thread: Making Japanese friends in University (/thread-10820.html)
Making Japanese friends in University - Gaylakkuma - 2013-05-23
I met some friends from my dorm/classes who have just come to Japan on exchange in April. I want to be able to give advice to them on how to make friends and such and I did give some advice, but it didn't work out.
I told them to go to exchange events and make friends from there since Japanese people who go to those events want to meet foreign students. They did, but they told me that the Japanese people were into native English speakers and since they were neither native or spoke much English, it was difficult to make friends.
I have already been in Japan for over half a year so I had some Japanese friends from school. The problem is most of them graduated in April. The ones who haven't are still around on campus but I haven't contacted them since last year and they should be pretty busy so that's not much of an option. The remaining are friends I only see during club activities (I joined a circle).
I have suggested joining circles but the problem is they would have to pay 5000 yen and they didn't go there to do the activity but to make friends so it wasn't worth joining in the end.
I'm not sure if it's a good idea to bring them to the arcade and introduce my gaming friends since they're not into gaming at all and I don't want to be a bad influence (games are addicting, time and money consuming).
I know since most people on this forum are a native English speaker, you guys won't really run into this problem. Although I know that I am not obliged to help them, I feel that as a fellow classmate/friend, I should, even though I don't really have the power to do so right now.
I have been pondering over this for a month and still haven't come up with a solution.
Has anyone dealt with this problem before? Just curious. If anyone has any advice to give, that'd be great.
Making Japanese friends in University - dizmox - 2013-05-23
Quote:I have suggested joining circles but the problem is they would have to pay 5000 yen and they didn't go there to do the activity but to make friends so it wasn't worth joining in the end.That's the reason everyone joins, though. I can't think of any other way other than making friends online or making conversations with strangers, or perhaps attending some Japanese student oriented classes.
Making Japanese friends in University - Gaylakkuma - 2013-05-27
Thanks for your input! Today I asked them if they found any circles to join and it turns out they did end up joining one. It's one of those where members only meet up once or twice a month to go to a cafe to drink coffee and chat. Apparently there wasn't a huge fee for joining and all they were required to do was talk (and buy coffee) so it was perfect!
From what I've seen, for people of Asian descent who don't speak much English it is a bit trickier to find Japanese friends (because there aren't any Chinese or Korean language conversation groups, but a ton of English ones at my school).