Wasn’t sure where to share this, but I guess this could be treated as a resource. Let me know if there is a better place.
I’ve recently started using VRChat, which is basically a metaverse in development. While I personally use it in VR, which is the most amazing thing ever, it can also be used without it. In a nutshell, you can come and just chat with people all around the world. Second Life would be similar to what this is.
But for me, the most amazing discovery was a couple of “worlds” which were made by Japanese users and now plenty of Japanese hang out there, even at 6am JST. So personally it turned out the best possible place to go and practice my spoken Japanese for free and even make some friends.
Anyways, I now plan to at least drop by for an hour every evening to force myself to talk in Japanese more often. While currently I am mostly listening and try to engage in conversation, I can see how quickly this will make me speak with more confidence.
So check it out and let me know if you wanna hang out, my username is the same in there DouTatsu: https://www.vrchat.net/
Oh wow, I was just in VRChat for the first time today! The first person I talked to had hiragana characters, so we talked Japanese. Second person was Chinese, met him on the Titanic ship singing Celine Dion “My Heart Will Go On” in his Chinese accent.
I don’t use VR, but my friend does, and he was using his VR stuff today.
I will swing by, my name in there is the same as here. But I’m still a newbie. I was trying to say it was my first day, and I was like “Watashi no ichi-nichi”, and he was like “Wakarimasen…” ROFL!
Also, it is totally free, and I don’t use VR like I said. It was just a spontaneous decision this morning. Within 3 minutes of the idea, I was in the world choosing my avatar. I searched for “Japanese” and saw Japanese Shrine world.
Nice one, I’ve been getting pretty addicted myself, probably put around 5 hours in just the last weekend. Playing in VR is just something else, I doubt I’d be that active if it wasn’t for that.
I’ll add you when I am in there again and show you the worlds I know that have a lot of Japanese people