I Need Japanese Friends!

Ohaio duders,

This is not the desperate beg of a socially-awkward, lonely kid that the title might suggest. I promise.

I am a Japanese Arts and Literature student in University of Tehran in Iran. Around 50 people in 80 million population of Iran are learning Japanese, and I am one of them; and native Japanese people in Iran are like dragons in Game of Thrones. There are 3 of them, and they're my sensei.

So as you can see, I could greatly benefit from having a few Japanese friends, to help with learning this wonderful (Also, nuts) language. It seems that everytime my friends/class-mates and I start talking in Japanese, it very quickly gets to a point where we either A) Run out of things to say, e.g. "So desne!" B) Do not know how to say what we want to say.

So who else than the lovely Japanese Giantbombers!

Let me get a little romantic on you and introduce myself. Name's Mohammad Rezaie, 20 years of age, born in Iran, raised in Dubai, primary language's English, and I'm an aspiring filmmaker. Jesus, I feel like I am posting on Gamerdater.

I'll follow you on here, and if you'd be kind enough to link to your FB, I'll add you as a friend and like all your photos.

Oh, and before anyone else does:

Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu

私は少し日本語を知っているが、それは大丈夫であれば、私は、スペイン語であなたに話すことができる？

おてあらいえ いても いですか？私は、シヤワーを 浴びる 必要が ある。この フォーラムディスカッションは くだらないです。

English only on the forums please, folks. If you want to practice your skills or converse in other languages, please take it to PM's.

Well, you're going to be dealing with about a four hour time difference, so you're kind of lucky there?

Other than that, all I can really say is Google Skype groups and hope you get lucky. My recommendations? Pester the shit out of Lang-8 and Mixxer and.....there are probably others.

I might have some other advice, but that's it for now.

Thanks for the replies folks. I will ... capitalize on them?

Thank you for the advice, your grace.

I never knew about lang-8. Might just be what I am looking for.

You should check out japan-guide. Their forum has a classified ads section where you can find people who are looking for penpals/friends. There's a lot of japanese people who posts their ads there. Of course you can post your own ad and see if you get any bites.

Hi! Japanese major from LA here. I second the Lang-8 recommendation, and I would also encourage you to get on Twitter and Line. If you're having trouble communicating, I've found that improving your listening skills is the way to go. Dramas are great as the vocabulary and grammar used tends to be in common usage although I prefer podcasts myself. Bilingual News is one of my faves:

http://bilingualnews.libsyn.com/

I hope this helps!

@daiphyer:

• I believe this is the page that @gideonamos was talking about - http://www.japan-guide.com/local/?aCAT=2.
• I recommend this podcast, and in turn, anything that the two hosts recommend - Bilingual News by Michael & Mami.
• If you want to practice your Japanese reading and writing, give Japanese servers in online video games/Japanese video games a go! Bravely Default let's you play with English text and Japanese voices, for example. I've been playing Phantasy Star Online 2 in Japanese on my Vita these past few months, and have found it both interesting and fun!
• Create a list of Japanese people who speak English and Japanese on Twitter, and check/interact with them on a regular basis.
• I can also recommend Lang-8.
• Other than that, get on a plane and go to Japan! You'll meet lots of Japanese people over there!

P.S.

The rōmaji for "おはよう" (good morning) is spelt "ohayō", not "ohaio"!

For advanced users only.

Highly dependant on the game (genre/complexity/type of community/style of server) I should have said! Playing through a single player video game that you're already very familiar with in English and then hitting up again in Japanese is defo A Thing.

But yes, trying to play a complex online multiplayer dependant video game like [INSERT NAME OF COMPLEX ONLINE MULTIPLAYER DEPENDANT VIDEO GAME HERE] could end up badly. It worked for stuff like Monster Hunter and Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XI, though!

@fattony12000: @yaobikuni: Domo arigato gozaimasu.

I checked out both Japan Guide and Lang-8. They're great, and exactly what I was looking for.

What is the level of Bilingual News? I have only recently finished N4, so there might be a vocabulary issue with the podcasts. Nonetheless, I have been looking for Japanese podcasts forever. Thank you very much for that.

This I know, and I didn't even get to the part where I saw other players.

Other Japanese tip of the day: avoid sci-fi games for a while.

@video_game_king: @fattony12000: I played Dragon's Dogma in Japanese for about 2 hours. I could understand most of the one sentence companion dialog. "Sochirade ikimasu!"

But then I got to the castle and the kingsguard or whatever started talking about dragons and their history and I was like :O

I decided to leave the Japanese games for when I am further ahead in N3. I watched that Bayonetta anime, which is fantastic, by the way, and understood more than I did video games. I am also watching Captain Tsubasa.

What is a good Japanese dorama? All the doramas my friends watch are these romantic girly ones, and I can't stand those.

Listening to the 8-4 Podcast, check out Yo-Kai Watch if you want to learn conversational Japanese easily. Apparently, the subtitles use furigana over kanji and the show is Persona Pokémon.

Check out some Tokusatsu like Kamen Rider or Super Sentai.

@daiphyer: Just pick an episode and hear for yourself!

@corruptedevil: Oh, man. Japanese Power Rangers. Thank you!

@fattony12000: I did, eventually. I was out, then. They speak way too fast for me. I think anime for kids might be more suitable.

*Insert one of those "find asian women" banners that are all over the internet here*

Seriously, I hope you find some. I had a Japanese friend when I was studying in Canada and I miss him =( There are no Japanese in Sweden. We have plenty of Asians (part of my family is Vietnamese and I had a Chinese girl as my first love) but no Japanese.

@daiphyer: I'm glad you listened to one of the Bilingual News episodes. I understand it might be a little overwhelming at first but I would definitely keep the link in your bookmarks to revisit at a later point in your studies. Keep in mind too that they sell the scripts on their companion app, and that you can play the podcasts at half speed if need be. In regards to your questions about level, the grammar and sentence structure used is on par with N3 although you may have noticed that the vocabulary level is N2, N1, and even above depending on the topic. The show does have an active Twitter and Facebook community, and I've noticed that many of their listeners are looking to improve their English skills. It might not be a bad idea to ask if anybody would be interested in a language partner as I'm sure there would be more than a few people interested. It's just a thought. =)

Now for the drama recommendations, I tend to stay far away from fluff and focus on those shows that discuss serious social issues. If that appeals to you, I suggest watching The Queen's classroom, Monster Parent, Hanzawa Naoki, The Brothers Karamazov, and Alice's Thorn. The last three are more of the N2 and N1 level though but great nonetheless. I also think games are a great way to study Japanese, but SciFi/Fantasy and horror games tend to use more arcane words and Kanji. It's not impossible but you'll have to do a lot more work to understand even basic material.

I forgot to add this link last time, but NHK News Easy is another great study site. The articles have been simplified and they also have audio and written versions of the articles.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/

@yaobikuni: Yeah, I definitely want to go back to Bilingual News. It is too fast for me right now, I need to practice more N3 listening first. I'll need to slow it down, too.

I checked out Japan Guide and found a few people interested in being language partners, so, that's great.

Thanks for the dorama recommendations! Definitely what I was looking for. I'd also like some satire, comedy shows, if you know of any.