I decided to try and make friends through a different channel rather then the classic lang-8 style of language exchange. I decided to play a game I had played a few times before, but this time to do it on a Japanese server. On my game profile I put up a little note saying something like "I'm studying Japanese and so want to make Japanese friends, feel free to message me". I felt really weird putting that there, but it did mean that I got a few messages from people interested to talk to me (and helped to prevent people attacking my account ).

The main way I connected with people though was by talking to people in the alliance that I had joined. It was pretty hard considering my vocab consisted of nothing relating to war and strategies. However, for some reason the in-game chat stopped working and so a few people decided to use skype to communicate. Through skype I started talking to two people fairly regularly. They both seemed really nice but one guy was slightly creepy, used pretty complex grammar and never really fixed or helped me with my Japanese (It wasn't very good at that point).

The other guy though I kept talking to a couple times a month for maybe 8 months or more before I went to Japan. (This was all typed chat btw). I had never seen his picture or heard his voice until right before I went to Japan when he called me and I only heard his voice for a few seconds because I freaked out and couldn't remember how to say anything in Japanese ^.^"

After being in Japan for 3 months though I asked him if he wanted to meet up, and we did meet up in Tokyo. It was fairly awkward and considering my lack of speaking ability it was kind of hard to talk. However, we did still have fun. I continued talking to him via chat when I was back in Australia, and last month met him for a second time when I came back to Japan. This time was a lot less awkward and was heaps of fun. I now have a very good friend.

I definitely recommend trying to make friends via the internet, but maybe try a different approach like I did. (I played a game called travian). That way you have something to talk about in the beginning. Also hope that the people you find have similar interests so that they stay interesting to talk to.
Stay away from creeps

頑張ってね

P.S. sorry for such a long post ^^

Last edited by Purrlsta (2012 June 06, 4:58 am)

How many people have you talked to? Language exchange offers some good ice-breakers, but it doesn't mean you have anything in common. I've made maybe 5 friends - three of which I've met - after talking to at least a couple of hundred people. A lot of the time you'll realise it's not really working after the initial 'why are you studying Japanese?' type conversation trail. Some people I can talk to for a while on Skype and then the conversations kind of dry up.

You can't force relationships with people, so you just have to play the odds. If you're going through slow e-mail or bulletin board processes to eventually get to Skype, I can understand why you'd be frustrated. Try using Shared Talk instead. You can talk to people one-off with the voice or text chat there, and if the convo goes well, you can exchange Skype details. Remember you're after language exchange; long-term friendship is a big bonus that happens sometimes.

Doctorhabib wrote:

Especially when they are girls , it creates this unwanted  man-woman tension.

Not at all! My best friend is in her 30s or so, I think, and man, we have talked about intimate things she would not even tell her best friends out there! It depends on the person you contact really or get in touch and on yourself, how much you want to lay bare..

Purrlsta wrote:

Tori-kun wrote:

Doctorhabib wrote:

Especially when they are girls , it creates this unwanted  man-woman tension.

Not at all! My best friend is in her 30s or so, I think, and man, we have talked about intimate things she would not even tell her best friends out there! It depends on the person you contact really or get in touch and on yourself, how much you want to lay bare..

I totally agree with Tori-kun.

Although I'm a girl most of my best friends are guys. There's only man-woman tension if you let there be.

Thirded. One of my absolute best mates is a girl and while we`ve had our moments of sexual tension I feel that it`s only made us better friends in the long run. It`s extremely possible to have that male-female friendship without any trouble though. I think that style of thinking is very 1950s.

kainzero wrote:

the problem i had with finding online friends is that it gets boring because all you can do is talk and not really create experiences. also a lot of the japanese people tend to repeat the same topics and shift if to making it impersonal instead of personal.

In order to deal with the first point there, I say just don't talk to them very often. If I make a new good friend I often find that we both want to talk to each other everyday or so because we're finding the other person super interesting. I get bored of chatting to people over the internet super fast though cause you run out of things to talk about, so if I want to keep talking to someone over the long term I know I can only talk to them a few times a month (which I suppose isn't very good if you're looking for a language partner).

With your second point, isn't that true for lots of people? Sure, some people spill out their guts over the internet because of the sense of detachment, but many others keep talking about impersonal things for a long time before they feel comfortable with the other person. You could be right though, maybe Japanese people in general are more wary of talking about personal things? I don't know. (Thinking about it now, at the beginning it seemed as though my friend thought I had an ulterior motive if I asked him what he had done that day O.o But now I can ask him anything )

Hello, all. First post here. I have a similar feeling. I'd like to speak to a native speaker to practice, but I feel I don't know enough Japanese yet to make any such communication meaningful. At what point is one ready to make a Japanese contact, and how does such communication typically start?  Making a contact who is not already fluent in English just seems useless to me. But I'm also afraid that talking to someone fluent in English would make English a crutch against any need to push my limits, and end up stalling my progress.

Who has made a Japanese contact? At what point in your learning did you make it, and how much communication was just "How do I say this?" And "Could you correct this?" How much of the communication was a learning experience with the language, and how much was awkward conversation?

I feel like such a contact could be useful for me, but I have lots of reservations about trying it myself.