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I’m posting this topic because I’d like help with this. I’d like to know what are the best ways to make friends with Japanese speaking people in the United States? I know that people’s situations vary and the approach will vary due to this, but here is my situation:
I am a college graduate and no longer a student (26 y/o), so I don’t have the option of making friends at school. I do, of course, have access to the internet. I live in Kansas City.
I would really like to make friends with some Japanese individuals who know both English and Japanese. I wouldn’t mind making friends with some Americans who are also learning Japanese, but primarily I’d like to befriend some Japanese people my age so that I can learn more from them about their culture, customs, etc. Obviously, they will have a much closer connection to this and be much more surrounded by it than a non-Japanese American.
So, while it seems at first that what I want is just someone to help me learn Japanese and learn about Japan, to be honest, I actually could use some more friends in general, and I’d be really interested in just meeting some people to make acquaintances with that could possibly even grow into lasting friendships. I’m really big into Japanese food, culture, and anime, and I’d love to have more friends who like to do stuff like visit the Asian Supermarket, eat at Japanese Restaurants, watch anime and Japanese movies, etc. I’d really just love to find some people with similar interests to mine. Whether that develops into casual acquaintances or sincere friendships, really it is fine with me either way! But I could definitely use some face-to-face interaction with people who speak Japanese, in order to help me learn to speak it better.
Perhaps I need to visit some kind of a club? That sounds like it might be the ideal setting to meet people like this. How could I find out more about Japanese language or culture clubs in my area? Though I do think that these days the internet provides a good opportunity to meet people on a more one-on-one basis. I’m not opposed to using either route.
Anyway, without going on too much and making this sound like some awkward online personals ad, this is my question to you. What are the best ways to connect with other Japanese speakers in the US, particularly people of Japanese heritage? Do you have any tips or advice you can offer? I’m looking for people in my area that I could actually meet up with. Please let me know!
★ ライオンFrom my experience with trying to find a person from Japan in America (that’s not touring) is none. I’m sure there are plenty of Japanese people living in America either for work or education, I just haven’t found any. I actually went to several Japanese restaurants and nobody, not even the owner, was Japanese or hardly knew a few words of Japanese.
I think your best bet is lang-8.com, if you haven’t heard of it it’s kind of like an electronic pen-pal where you make a post in Japanese and you get corrected by Japanese speakers. It’s a great way to meet a lot of people born and raised in Japan who are interested in learning English. Unfortunately your only friends within the context of helping each other with languages, culture, etc… not really the best place for any other stuff.
Unfortunately, If you want a real Japanese friend then you have to move to Japan.
By the way, you mentioned several times you like anime, which anime do you like?
You can usually find out about japanese communities in your areas.
e.g.
Well, online personals you say -> okcupid.com – a lot of people use it not for dating but for just meeting people & making friends.
To the OP, I can’t offer any advice, but I can sympathise with you.
I’m at the point now where I sorely need someone to speak with if I’m ever going to get better at this language. And not just to “use” them as a study tool either, I just would really enjoy having a real friend with whom I can speak Japanese and just hang out with.
Of my current friends, only one of them has anything in common with me (and I rarely get to see him). He’s not Japanese, but would also like to learn it, and he loves it as much as I do. The rest of them all think my “obsession” with Japan is some kind of hilarious joke…
Though the fact that there ARE Japanese people around me almost makes it feel worse.
There’s a restaurant I frequent that’s 90% staffed by native Japanese (including the owner/founder). As I’m a frequent customer, they all know me and we’re on a first-name basis (they even hung up one of my drawings in the store). They let me practise with them, but I can’t really fully call them “friends” as we only ever see each other when I go eat there, plus they’re all much older than me.
The son of one of the waitresses there knows me a little. He swings by my store to pick summat up for his mum once in a blue moon and we say hi to each other, but that’s about it. He speaks Japanese but prefers English, so we’ve only ever spoken English to each other.
The restaurant is so far the only place I can get any kind of practise in. And that’s getting a little expensive for me, so it’s no solution. I actually tried to get a job there (twice) but no go. Even tried the above-mentioned okcupid.com, but that was a disappointment and a half.
So the few Japanese people around me are like the apples of Tantalus to me. So close, yet so far away. How does one begin a proper friendship with someone without coming off like some weird awkward weeaboo?
I tell you, there’s times where I feel like a man wandering a vast wasteland.
@Wiseguy12851 – It does seem like there aren’t as many Japanese in some regions of the US. For example, like you mentioned, most of the Japanese restaurants in my area aren’t run by Japanese people, but in most cases Koreans here in Kansas City. However, we have a huuuge asian supermarket here that is jam packed on weekends and I always see many Japanese people there of all ages speaking Japanese to one another. Since it’s just a grocery store I feel like it would be quite awkward for me to butt in and try to speak to people. I may look into lang-8 later on. Thanks for the tip.
@Andrew – Thanks for the resources. I think I stumbled on one or two of these before, but forgot about them. These will probably be really helpful!
@vanandrew – Hmm, I may have to try your tip if nothing else works out. It may not be a bad idea.
@gigatron – Boy, do I know how you feel. If you want, I could chat with you online on instant messenger if you use one. I don’t even have any friends online to practice my Japanese with.
If you want I’m on yahoo messenger – shininglion at rocketmail dot com
and windows live messenger – shininglion at live dot comOf course replace the ats and dots with their appropriate symbols @ .
I may have my windows live set up not to accept outside friend requests unless I add someone first, so if you do add me to that one, just email me at the live.com email address and let me know so I can add you too. I have skype as well, though I don’t use it as much. My skype ID is shininglion. Email me if you plan to add me on there because I never log in to it normally. Of course, if you don’t like to use IM or don’t spend much time online, disregard all this. Just giving you the option! ^^
I hope you are able to figure out a way to meet some friends interested in Japanese. Maybe we can figure something out together. Thanks for your input on this!
★ ライオンI think I have too many japanese friends on the internet, but even then I don’t speak to them as much. As for actually making them, I will just say from my experience that language learning sites such as lang-8 or livemocha are good ways to make friends of the language that you are learning. My first Japanese friends came from talking to one lang-8 through PMs and one from when I put a post of Skype forums about asking for a language partner. Though I can say, most of my friends come from lang-8. I would definitely be weird to suddenly talk to a Japanese person you hear speaking from like a grocery store.
Another way is through this site: http://www.meetup.com/ I was able to find some near me, however, there are in NYC, and I don’t live in NYC so that sucks for me.
A third way would be working at one of those places where Japanese is used. This is an approach that many people have done, such as Danny Choo or Hikosaemon and judging by how well they speak now, I would guess it would have some effect.
Ｏｆ ｃｏｕｒｓｅ， ｙｏｕ ｃａｎ ａｌｗａｙｓ ａｄｄ ｍｅ ｏｎ Ｓｋｙｐｅ （ｍｉｓｓｉｎｇｎｏ１５），ｔｈｏｕｇｈ Ｉ ｄｏｎ’ｔ ｋｎｏｗ ｈｏｗ ｍｕｃｈ ｇｏｏｄ ｔｈａｔ ｗｉｌｌ ｄｏ ｙｏｕ．Ｍａｙｂｅ ｕｎｌｅｓｓ ｙｏｕ ｗａｎｔ ｔｏ ｂｅ ｏｎｅ ｏｆ ｍｙ ｔｅｓｔ ｓｕｂｊｅｃｔｓ．
Hey you live in KC? I live in Leavenworth which is about 45min to KC! Anyway, I’ll have a new job training March26 and for the next 10 days up in the city, maybe we could meet and grab lunch or something. And speak Japanese! Although I’ve been slacking on study but it would be fun to try ^^
Oh yeah I don’t check here very often so if you are interested just email me :3 larisa dot jw at gmail dot com.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
yani.
@Shining Lion, that’s a fine offer mate. I don’t generally use online chat services, but I’d definitely reconsider for the chance to make at least one more friend who’s worth talking to. :)
@Missingno, indeed the ideal would be to work at a place where Japanese is spoken. I would LOVE to work at the restaurant I mentioned. It’d be a dream come true just for the chance to get that kind of immersion every day. Hell, I’d work for free if I had to, the practise would be payment enough. Sadly they never want to hire me. Same goes for the Japanese market I go to.
Obviously they’d prefer to keep me as a paying repeat customer and not as someone they’d have to pay. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if its also because they really don’t want to put up with some silly fool constantly spouting broken Japanese, and I don’t blame them.
Lang-8 is a weak alternative, IMO. I have talked with some people on there, but they usually just want to stick to English (obviously as it’s the language they want to learn). Online friends aren’t really what I want though, I’d rather have a proper face-to-face friendship.
There’s something to be said about how important that can be. With nobody to share/practise with, studying Japanese honestly becomes a very lonely experience for me, and it severely kills my motivation.
Try leaving bowls of natto outside your house at night.
I tried. All I got were raccoons… :C
Did the racoons speak or respond to Japanese?
No, on a more serious note, there is a person on Lang-8 who really want to practice English with somebody on skype – I think you have to PM him on lang-8 (username: KEN0405) since he didn’t specify his skype id in the post he wrote here: http://lang-8.com/166823/journals/1356813/Skype%253F
Also, as far as making deep friendships, lang-8 is a weak choice because it’s solely designed for getting corrections and maybe very mild communication about cultural questions and such.
I wish it could be a little easier though to speak with someone in the language your learning, I have to agree with Gigatron in that it becomes very lonely! I finally just started speaking to some of my relatives even though they don’t know a word of Japanese in order to get better at forming sentences although 1-sided conversations are starting to get boring — はっと ().
@wiseguy, nah they just spoke Slovenian. >:(
But yes I agree, in fact you hit it on the head. Lang-8 is a great resource for just that, getting/giving corrections, but not so good at making friends, because everyone’s (understandably) out for their own objective.
Case in point, I swapped several messages once with someone on Lang-8. We spoke about our hobbies and this & that, noted that we both liked video games and whatnot. She was learning English and Spanish. Not a single word of Japanese was exchanged. I’m sure it was great practise for her, but not so much for me. The benefits end up being one-sided for one of the two parties.
One of the main reasons I had quit studying Japanese was the lack of a clear benefit to all the effort. Recently I decided to pick it back up again, but without anyone to really talk to, I’m honestly just not seeing any benefit (for me) in knowing Japanese. I’m very likely just going to drop it again, maybe for good, unless something changes.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
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