What’s the best way to learn speak Japanese when you have no Japanese friends to practice it to?
You can search for local language exchange groups, or check out some language learning apps like HelloTalk.
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Thank you. Much appreciated. 
No problem, good luck finding someone!
I have a similar problem, so I’ve been using my dog as my language partner. She is an excellent listener, but her accent is pretty ruff. 
It would be nice to find someone who knows enough Japanese to hold up their side of the conversation, but I’ll take what I can get for now.
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Let’s rephrase this
It would be nice to find a Japanese person who knows enough English to hold up their side of the conversation,
but I’ll take what I can get for now.
Now, that’s definitely possible, don’t you think? 
Except that it would involve using Japanese in front of other humans. Sounds too risky.
I think this is a more realistic next step in my Japanese speaking practice.
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おすわり！
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So you wanna risk making mistakes during speaking but not in writing? 
いいえ, 違います。
On the contrary, I’d say that the issue is that I’m much more comfortable making mistakes in writing than I am making mistakes in front of native Japanese speakers.
I’ll have to cross that bridge eventually, but for the moment, I prefer the non-judgmental gaze of my Labrador retriever watching over me while I struggle with my pronunciation and slowly develop my fledgling speaking skills. She cannot tell me when I say something wrong … but that’s kind of the point. I just work from the assumption that I’m butchering the language horribly and try to shadow native speech as closely as possible.
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When I read “conversation”, I read it as a normal exchange (both writing and/or speaking), not as speaking exclusively. That’s why the disconnect of ideas is happening. Sorry
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No worries. It probably doesn’t help that I was joking around a little.
Re-reading your post, I think you might have misunderstood my meaning when I said “I think this is a more realistic next step in my Japanese speaking practice.”
I was referring to the picture in that post, which is of a Shiba Inu. Implying that my next step would be to move on from practicing spoken Japanese with my dog to practicing with a Japanese dog.
Baby steps … baby steps …
(if you did understand, my apologies for over-explaining the joke)
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