What are the best questions to ask Japanese people that aren’t so superficial/small talk like?

I’ve only been doing language exchanges for about almost three years. I’ve asked stuff like 好きな食べ物は or 趣味は何 but something I’ve noticed is that it can be sort of hard to have deeper conversations. I know part of it is because of the language barrier, but even now that my Japanese has gotten more proficient over the years I feel like I can’t get past this wall of superficial small talk. What kind of questions/topics that are more interesting that Japanese people would appreciate foreigners asking them about?