I’ve mentioned before that a great way to practice language immersion is to find a speaking partner. It’s one of my fluency goals to find a consistent “Japanese buddy”, in fact.

In a classroom environment, students have the advantage of speaking with one another in Japanese. This can be very helpful, but at the same time, you’re both limited to the vocabulary and understanding you have so far. You also risk teaching one another your mistakes, and you’ll likely be locked into speaking politely. That’s not inherently bad, but to reach true fluency, you’ll want to learn informal speaking patterns as well.

Japanese has different politeness levels depending on to whom you’re speaking; a native speaker doesn’t talk to their boss the same way they talk to their friends. Of course, you don’t in English, either, but in Japanese “politeness” is coded into words more intensely. I’ll have to make that a topic for another day, though.

At any rate, you will almost always be taught “polite” Japanese first.

When you’re trying to teach yourself Japanese outside of a classroom, though, you usually have to go out of your way to find a speaking partner, regardless of who they are. This is why when I look for a Japanese buddy, I try to find a native Japanese speaker who speaks enough English for us to be able to communicate.

Fortunately, in the age of the internet, this is fairly easy.

The two best places to find a Japanese speaking buddy that I have found are Conversation Exchange and HelloTalk. Another popular one is Italki, but I can’t personally vouch for how good they are, as I haven’t tried them myself.

Conversation Exchange

I honestly wasn’t expecting to like Conversation Exchange when I first signed up as much as I ended up doing. Their web design is, uh… a bit, um… lacking. The actual site is pretty dang useful, though. I’ve had several native Japanese speakers approach me (an average of about one per day) to ask to chat so we can teach one another.

The site allows you to search for people by target language and communication platform. I have yet to successfully make contact with someone who uses Discord, unfortunately, which is my preferred platform. It seems like most Japanese people on there prefer Line or Skype.

You can also look for people who want to be penpals, however, if chat’s not your thing. There’s a face-to-face option too, but I feel like if you can do that, you’re probably not struggling to find someone who speaks Japanese.

Conversation Exchange is primarily to assist in making connections. This is its strength. You can message people on the site itself, but its intention is to set you up with someone you can talk to on a regular basis on a platform of your choice, which I think is fantastically useful.

HelloTalk

HelloTalk is an app that has similar functions to Conversation Exchange. Personally, I had a hard time finding people who were willing to hold a conversation beyond the initial interaction, and it was rare anyone ever reached out to me for conversation first. This made things a bit rough for me personally, since I tend to be rather socially anxious and always worry that I’m going to bother someone by reaching out unprompted. I feel that if I had been more persistent (it’s been a while since I used the app regularly), I might have had better luck.

That said, where HelloTalk really shines is the ability to make posts called Moments that are sort of like a micro-blog. You can type in Japanese, and native speakers will go in and correct you (!) so you can see in detail where you’re off the mark. You can help them the same way by correcting their posts in English. This was the extent of the vast majority of my interactions on this app, but while its potential is certainly much greater than this, Moments alone make HelloTalk worth a shot.

You can also record audio posts, or listen to audio posts by native Japanese speakers. This helps you work on your pronunciation, either by listening to someone else or by having a native speaker correct you.

Another nice thing is that Moments can also feature pictures, which often give you a cool glimpse into Japanese culture in a way you don’t necessarily see in media. Right now, people are still sharing their personal pics from Bon Odori 盆踊り, a festival which took place earlier this month. It can be captivating to get a peek into someone’s personal experience living in Japan like that. You also might run into pictures of things like Japanese food (often homemade; more than what they show in anime!), special events, or even Japanese memes.

Conclusion

Overall, these are the best two places I’ve found to match with a Japanese speaking partner. I would say it’s worth using both of these services. As an app, HelloTalk is always in your pocket if you want to fire it up. It’s also well-designed and has some fairly unique features, but be aware that you might have to take some persistent initiative if you’re looking for real conversation. Conversation Exchange is also a great option for finding a Japanese buddy, and in my experience it was easier to find people to talk to for more than just a fleeting language pointer. I do wish it was a bit less clunky, though, and a sleek-looking app would do worlds for its first impression.

Have you tried either of these? What did you think? Did I leave out anything important? Is there another great place you know of to find native Japanese speakers to converse with? Let me know, and maybe I can update this list!