Is it Difficult to Make Friends in Japan?

get ready to set your phasers from stun to copyright infringement I did a howl hope they've cut away with this I'm not sure which question I get asked more is it difficult to make friends in Japan or why do you never smile I smiled last Tuesday when I met a friend and we made the groundbreaking discovery oh my god you were literally Kill Bill how have I never noticed this resemblance this is amazing now I'll admit it seems a bit odd or patronizing to make a video about making Japanese friends in Japan making friends is a precious life skill which should be as easy as breathing air walking backwards or enjoying a pitbull song and yet it is a genuine problem no diggity no doubt there are many foreigners living in Japan with no Japanese friends mainly due to the language barrier but also because it can be easy to get trapped inside the foreigner before on a bubble which looks like that I should know I was no exception in my first year I spent nearly all of my time with other foreigners and other teachers and in my head I turned the language barrier into a much bigger deal than it actually was because I couldn't communicate in Japanese ultimately my luck changed at the end of my first year when I was walking down the street downtown and this Japanese guy walking towards me was literally shocked to see a foreigner out in rural Japan and his name was my name netsuke masky and grew it Chris oh good name that's meeting ya there from London wow wow yeah oh yeah yeah yeah whoa another guy and that's how I met my good friend ASCII just walking towards each other down the street on a Friday night whilst definitely not drunk you can go ah let's go let's go and by the end of my second year I was spending nearly all of my free time with Japanese friends and teaching them key English words and phrases in creatable in incredible oh what's right and that transition from being this overexcited tourist to actually living in Japan with many good friends with the cultural and language barriers torn down made me feel that Japan was a country I had a genuine future and after finishing as an English teacher so now it's not difficult to make Japanese friends in Japan at least not if you follow these three pieces so I'd say just by knowing a little Japanese even the most basic stuff will go a long way you'll find people will be far more willing to talk to you and one thing that helped me practice my Japanese and meet Japanese people while removing language barrier was actually an app called hello talk and it's become a really popular way here in Japan to meet conversation partners and make friends as well it's an excellent language exchange tool as it sells a few major problems with the whole language barrier as the app uses text and has translation functionality built into it you can easily get around these communication problems better still you can correct your friend when they make a mistake so it is a genuinely useful language learning tool I'm fairly certain half of Japan uses it as the moment you open up and choose Japanese as the language you're learning you will get so many people contacting you wanting to chat and you can also search to find someone who you think might be an ideal conversation partner based on their language ability where they are or their personal experience and you can even make free voice calls through the app as well which is really useful I've actually made some really good friends on there and I talk to you regularly and practice my Japanese with you can check out the link below or just search for hello tool but it'll certainly help you out particularly in the early stages of language learning when you want to try and practice some expressions you'd learn pretty fun and easy to use for anyone learning Japanese whether you're in or outside of Japan first of all if you live in Japan don't end up like me in my first year sat inside with a grammar book all day eating cornflakes and by the way while we're on the subject of cornflakes to afford Kellogg's in Japan you will have to remortgage your house and your children unfortunately there's only one alternative and it makes even cardboard seem favorable as well as that it has a rather cheeky brand character get ready to set your phasers from stun to copywriting for anything I don't know how hope they've cut away with this this is Tenney's Timmy cereal and look what they've done to the Kellogg's cockerel almost identical with two subtle differences Timmy's cockerel has a helmet and sunglasses I wish I could have glimpsed the marketing team of Timmy's sit down to conceive this character we should probably think of some kind of original character to help brand the product now it let's use the Kellogg's cockerel what does that be like copyright infringement no if we put a helmet on the cockerel really yeah and sunglasses huh but yeah I learn from my mistakes don't go and buy this and as a massive tangent Altima before he came to Japan I kind of thought the whole standing out as a foreigner thing would lead to me having loads of random encounters I thought if I sat in a coffee shop long enough Japan would come to me I didn't I met my five closest Japanese friends in a street a house party at a work party at a local festival and randomly at a bar I'd say if you go to a lot of parties where you can meet people in the same social circle it really helps as it gives us all Blair of trust by knowing that you share a mutual friend although I think I'm starting to read into things too much we all know the real secret to making friends in Japan is tip number three first of all I'm not advocating the consumption of alcohol probably but in Japan alcohol feels less like a drink and more like something out of Dumbledore's potions cabinet you'll find Japanese people can suddenly speak English after just two drinks all of your work colleagues who don't speak a word of English will suddenly magically become fluent at work party for example one non English teacher at the school I worked actively avoided me in the corridor for fear of having to use English yeah after just two beers at a recent party he was able to talk to me about his favorite bridges for over an hour in flawless English and you know it was a interesting conversation but English aside that you'll find people who are usually shy reserved a nun opinionated will suddenly open up you might hear the words on there and tat in my patent my is public stance of what people have on all day at work so a lot of opinions are kept to themselves and it can be difficult to know what someone actually really thinks on that is their real thoughts and opinions and certainly after a few drinks the floodgates will open up there so in Japan alcohol is really important in its role as a social tool so whether you're a bar and izakaya or a nightclub if there's alcohol involved it can be a heck of a lot easier to make friends so maybe go and drink something so there you go lots of advice for making friends in Japan if you have any advice yourself please leave a comment below as for me though I need to get back to working on my new chill cartoon character and I I think the kids are gonna love machi the mouse currently passing through Hiroshima it's an amazing city in fact you can see the a bomb dome just from the hotel window here definitely visit the city if you get the chance also please follow on Instagram and Facebook so you can keep up to speed on what's going on and get useful information along the way until next time see you later

Channel: Abroad in Japan

Views: 904,734

Rating: 4.9763455 out of 5

Keywords: Japan (Country), Japanese (Ethnicity), Japanese Language (Interest), hellotalk, languageexchange, friends, languages, Talk, Fluency, Learn, Translation, How to, App, Travel, Hello, ญี่ปุ่น, เพื่อนญี่ปุ่น, ภาษาญี่ปุ่น, อังกฤษ, ฝรั่ง

Id: 3ncvXDEKPuM

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/nudesnotnukes]

The Natsuki Origin Video. Classic.

[u/JZ_TwitchDeck]

Not as hard as it would seem, based on my experience. When my girlfriend and I went there in September, we stopped by a sushi restaurant in Tsukiji Market. She stumbled a bit on asking the chef for a dish, so a stranger sitting next to us at the bar jumped in to help her out. We ended up striking up a conversation with him and exchanged email addresses by the end of it.

The Japanese have a reputation of being a bit repressed and introverted, but get yourself in the right situation and it seems you can get them to open up. Like fucking up "Onegaishimasu". Lol