I’ve only ever met 1 Japanese person in my life despite studying this language for 2yrs… And so I think it’s time I go out of my basement and interact with my fellow people
The only idea that pops up to my mind is to find religious groups as they seem to have gatherings for free, any other ideas?
About daunting but idm infiltrating the religious groups as I’ve grew up in one lol but just wanna know if there are like other options
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Uh… just because I learned English for the past decade or two, that *really* didn’t have much effect in the number of Englishmen I met. But anyways.
Is there a good reason it must be a Japanese person, in person? Believe me, if you simply crash in to a given Japanese group with the sole purpose of practicing your Japanese skills, you won’t be feeling too welcomed there.
I’m sure there’s a bunch of internet groups in the form of discord etc., or you could simply use a tutor. Any reason(s) why they don’t come up in your options?
Try looking on meetup for language exchange groups or Japanese-language speaking groups?
Go to Japan, you’ll meet plenty of Japanese people there.
You’re probably approaching this the wrong way with “my fellow people”.
Just look for cultural/language exchange apps or groups. Anything other than that has to come organically or it’ll just be weird.
If you can, go to Japan! There will be lots of situations where you feel you can talk to someone. Of course you need a bit of social awareness.
I live in Belgium, pretty close to Bruges. And there are often Japanese tourists there. Just last week I say 2 guys. They looked Japanese, they spoke Japanese. So I just said in Japanese… “Sorry, are you Japanese? Oh.. I learn Japanese, it’s my hobby. I’ve been to Japan many times. Are you on holiday? Do you like Belgium..” and so on. Turns out one of those guys works in my hometown and we’ll hang out some time!
And I’m a rather introverted person. For some reason I find Japanese people very easy to talk to.
Try hellotalk
Similar to what others are saying, I’d caution you to not expect any Japanese person you meet will be excited that you’re learning their language and will automatically become a language partner.
That out of the way: You would meet Japanese people the same way you’d any other people…since Japanese people _are_ people, and people are people.
If you’re trying to be highly specific in the type of person you meet, then.. you have to tilt the probabilities towards your desired outcome.
For example, if you want to meet people into rock climbing, maybe go to a rock climbing gym. This is tougher for nationalities. It’s going to depend on where you live.
If you want to meet people of a particular nationality, you have to find places or events that target or require people of that nationality. If you have a Japanese consulate or embassy nearby (maybe you’re in New York), see if they have meetings or events. If there are any International Japanese schools near you, maybe you can volunteer at one.
If there are any clubs catering to very niche, Japanese interests, you can check them out. Maybe Shogi?
I think probably one of the best things you could do is find a local Japanese teacher and sign up for their class. You will get some paid practice, but you’ll also meet the teacher. Whether they’re native Japanese or not, they have a better shot at knowing local other resources.
Try HelloTalk or Tandem apps
First you gotta know if there are even any japanese living in your country and home region, no japanese no meetups.
If there are, then maybe you have something like ,, china town ” but with japanese. Just go there and talk to people like you normaly would. Just dont force it too much and come over as desperate. If theres famous universities nearby you might check them out, i know people who socialized with foreigners that way.
Very likely above wont happen and unless you go to japan, you gotta use stuff like hellotalk, discord, twitch or games to actually use your japanese with a japanese person. Keep in mind though that if you are not interesting enough people will just stop talking to you, barely anyone is willing to talk to someone more than once just because hes learning his native language.
If you are American, I just want to mention that the Japanese Diaspora in America is orders of magnitude smaller than other Asian Americans. There are some Japanese immigrants here but Japan is a comfortable, first world country and most Japanese have very little economic incentives to emmigrate out of the country nowadays. There are a lot of people of Japanese descent in Hawaii but most of them third or fourth generation and are 100% culturally American and can’t speak any Japanese.