How to make more friends?

28 comments

1. [removed]

2. Try joining this class, small groups get together to cook and chat: https://www.global-kitchen-studio.com/

3. The best place to make friends is school/university. Once you start working, it really hard to.

   Maybe try developping a hobby then friends? For example 料理教室 ?

4. This is a mystery I also haven’t solved. Also doesn’t help that I often don’t quite know what to say..

5. Talk to people.

6. I’ll break it up to you early, there is no such a thing called friends; they will all leave whether back home or to other countries while the rest of them distance themselves because they have to take care of their families/lives

7. I’m a female in my late 20s and I know the feeling.
   I get attached pretty easily and all of the great foreign friends and coworkers I had here moved back to their country eventually.

   I’ve been going to foreigners/Japanese exchange parties in the hope of meeting other foreigners but most of the time I only get Japanese guys coming for the wrong reasons.
   I’ve lost hope of finding real foreign friends here, but at the same time I found that I enjoy my time alone painting and walking my dog. Guess I’ll end up being an hermit haha.
   Hope you’ll have better luck than me finding great friends here!

8. The hub

9. I would suggest to go to cooking classes? Sometimes the city office organizes some.
   I also came to japan in my early 20s and basically met my friends with my hobby which was going to concerts! I still have a very good relationship with most of them even though close to 10 years passed.
   But yeah basically like in other countries, try to engage a conversation with people alone (or wait for people to talk to you).
   Then I met other people at work who became my friends too!

10. I had pretty good success using the BFF function of bumble. Same concept as the dating app itself, but there’s no added pressure of trying to find someone to date, just people in your same boat trying to make friends.

11. I didn’t.

12. Meetup and similar things are… acceptable, usually. Just don’t go to places “to meet people”, do things WITH people. Multiple times with the same ones, if possible.

    People say it works. Can’t confirm.

13. Try Bumble BFF. There are apps for friend finding that work quite well since the people on there are joining for the same reason as you would.

14. Made my friends volunteering, at work (stayed in touch with former colleagues), at my local pub (some guy from my country started talking to me and we hit it off), and on Bumble (in my case it was someone I went on a date with who became a platonic friend, but Bumble also has a “BFF mode” to make friends). It gets easier once you have a couple of friends, especially if they’re outgoing people, because you get to meet your friends’ friends.

15. Well… I’m moving to Japan this month and I’m also willing to make new friends. By the way, I love to cook.

16. I know hello talk has an iffy reputation, but ive met some nice girls from there. They’re always friendly!

17. Hang out with the startup community. Lots of international and international-minded people and there are lots of (free) events to network and meet people!

18. Take a Japanese class. You’ll meet other people who want to learn and you’ll be better able to communicate with those who can best help you explore your interests locally.

    Being introverted shouldn’t interfere with making friends (social anxiety would for sure), so just put yourself out there and talk to as many people as you can. Then when your social battery is drained, retreat to your space and recharge so you can go out and do it again. This is the tried and true method for meeting people.

19. Mode 1 = Talk to someone you work with on a regular basis. Hang out with them outside of work to see who they are. Meet their friends and just keep meeting friends of those friends, etc.

    Mode 2 = Go to a place which represents who you are as a person on a regular basis, and see if you recognize any regulars there. Those people are probably similar to you in one way or another and are likely to be friend material.

    Mode 3 = Use the app HelloTalk.

    ​

    Best of luck! 🍀

20. I made a bunch of friends by joining a (now defunct) book club. We mainly read chick lit and drank and I’m still friends with them years later even though most no longer live in Japan.

21. I have no idea. I met people through work or shared interests (beer and food). However, very few of them are people I’d call friends.

22. You could join one of those cooking classes they often have in malls. They’re usually packed.

23. Visit your local community center to see if there’s anything there you might be interested in joining. An advantage to the language barrier is that people will assume you’re self-conscious and have a lot of patience with you.

24. I lived in a share house when I first came to Japan so I met a lot of people there.

    Now that I live by myself, I meet most people by going to bars near to where I live.

25. You can try Meet-up to find events or groups in your area, check Facebook for local events/activities, or try to join a language class or something to meet people.

26. I know how you feel. DM me if you want to talk.

27. I think the classic option of joining activity groups can be a good choice. Meeting people on reddit can also work surprisingly well, I’ve met a few people that way

    Honestly, it seems like the best way is once you make your first couple friends, finding more friends from them. Outside of school, I think I only met people at like two events originally, and most of my friends since then have all been chained together from there. Friends of friends, then friends of their friends, etc. I think my record is five deep? A friend of an acquaintance of a friend of a friend of a friend.

    It helps if you’re good at chatting with people and have a lot of interests. And only a small handful of my friends are men–I’m not sure exactly why, but I think it seems less threatening to meet women. If I invite people I meet to a girl’s night, it’s way easier to get them to come compared to if guys will be there.

28. Culture events, conversation groups, weekly meetup stuff.

    Even in Inaka, the local temple’s family host weekly ‘come and learn japanese’ meetings that turns into a social event. Met a couple new friends there, have barbeques a few times a year.