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Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan. People generally stick to social/activity circles, but even then, you have boundaries.

For example, if you have a golfing group, you guys may go out for drinks but that would be that. You'd almost (key word) never go over to someone else's house, or go see movies together, or any of that -- they're your "golf people."

But that's assuming that you do have a golf group or whatever. A large number of people just go through life with their friends from elementary, junior high, or high school... and then their friends from college. Then friends from the workplace, if you make any beyond the level of "drinks after work."

I know a lot of people who have "drinking friends" from various adult social circles, but their only "real" friends (in the Western sense of people you can chat to about almost anything, do almost anything with, etc.) are a tiny handful of people they've known since junior high or high school.

Loneliness is a huge problem in Japan.

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This is common in the U.S. too. I can't begin to tell you how many threads I've encountered where people go "How do you make friends after college?" or studies that show that people lose friends over time and hardly gain any after college, on average.

But, I don't think it has to be that way in the US. I myself went from having few friends to having more than I can keep up with, thanks to a period of two years where I went to a ton of Meetup.com events, writers groups, board game groups, and the like. Generally speaking I just had to keep showing up, make a little small talk, and then eventually people knew me and trusted me enough to start inviting me to things outside of it.

And I'm an introvert at heart. I still struggle to talk to people outside of these events and I still get exhausted by social activities.

Most people don't make that effort here, though, and that's one reason why they struggle (also there's some personalities that are either very abrasive, self-defeatist, or otherwise off-putting, and those people struggle as well). I find it's harder to keep up with myself now that I have a long term girlfriend and a puppy, but I still make an effort.

I wonder if that's possible in Japan as well, or if that's not even really a valid avenue over there.

Spot-on. I'm working on this myself after making a significant move to a big city from the mid-west. Never having started from a zero friend base is tough. While our culture doesn't always make it easy to make new friends, it's also very permissive about breaking molds. I'm constantly going to different meetups and group events and trying to say 'Yes' to every invite. Even other new people to the city aren't doing this but I don't get ostracized for being different. Occasionally people are even willing to tag along.

> Most people don't make that effort here, though, and that's one reason why they struggle

As far as "making an effort" goes, I can only speak for myself (in the sense that it's not worth judging whether other people are "trying" from their appearance), but it's definitely pretty difficult to get past that initial "social circle" restriction.

For example, I've worked at the same company for a few years, gone out for drinks with a few coworkers... attempts at casual chats between work, invitations to stuff beyond work, etc. are all politely rebuffed.

I've also done airsoft before; with the exception of one guy who's also actively looking for friends, nobody is interested in doing anything beyond airsoft. As far as I can guess, they're in that group to do airsoft, not to make friends or do other things with those people -- they just want to do airsoft.

As I said in the beginning though, this is just me and I don't think it's fair for me to judge whether other people are "making an effort," but my own efforts seem to indicate that it's a problem beyond that.

Well there are certainly friends where I mostly just do board games nights or talk about board games with. However, board games are inherently social and you tend to talk about other things while playing the games usually. In fact, I count some of those people among my closest friends now. It's also my primary hobby (in fact I design board games now), so I naturally spend a lot of time thinking about them anyway.

So part of it may be the activity. I've noticed it's been easier or harder to make friends depending on what it is. Dinners seem to work well, movies less so (although if you pair the movie with dinner it can be good). Board games are nice because if you don't really feel like chatting you can just be quiet and focus on playing the game. I bet other sports can be that way too. I remember Pool and Darts feeling that way at times. Trivia nights at pubs sorta worked as well for the same reason.

As for people at work.... I'm friendly with coworkers, and from time to time I will do something with them outside of work, but I've noticed that coworker friendships tend not to stick very well. I've actually found my first coworker friendship that I think might stick in over 20 years, and that's because we both have dogs and set up times to go to the dog park together (he also helped me find my dog when he went missing for a week).

I actually used to feel pretty cynical as well about making friends because I had such bad luck turning coworkers into friends. I stopped trying there a while ago.

I've also had bad luck at "Networking" events. Too many people are just there trying to find the next person to hire them or work with or pass their business card to. I have started having some luck at Hacker nights, though, again because I found one I just keep showing up to, and it's pretty low key.

And for the most part I didn't reach out too aggressively. I mainly just showed up to events, said hi to other regulars, listened in on some conversations, say something here and there, and showed up often enough to become a regular myself. I didn't start getting invites to private events by some people until I'd seen them at 10-20 events previously sometimes.

I had this exact trouble, and though friendly, didn't know how to tell how to make closer friends. I so wanted, but was so awkward and made social errors. I lucked into finding a bunch of accepting geeks in LA and then SF so I could err in their presence and become friends with some of them, gradually. But even then, knowing how to be closer and accepted as friends was hard. At last, one solution presented itself, through a lover. Being able to talk about myself, being vulnerable, sharing myself, allowed other apes to share about themselves too more, and feel closer. I now can make friends better than I used to. And miss all my friends in the Bay!

> It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan

Certainly not unique to Japan. I see many lonely people in western big cities for instance. Surprisingly, I find it much easier to find a girlfriend than a friend. You just go to a dating website, find someone "similar" and spend time together and you can get close very quickly. It's not the way regular friendship works where it takes much longer to get intimate.

> I see many lonely people in western big cities for instance

Not true for Berlin, though. If you regularily visit some hackerspaces (or other meetups with like-minded people, such as various user groups such as Emacs user group, political groups such as FSFE, whatever), or go to university and study there, you have very good chances finding friends, some of whom may turn out to be very good friends.

Sometimes it seems hard to get into groups, but usually this is just a matter of having the courage to talk to people, and not so much a matter of being actively rejected by others (although that happens sometimes, too, of course, because every "club" has some low percentage of anti-social-minded people, but those people are easy to ignore).

I assume this is true for the other large cities in Germany as well (Hamburg, Frankfurt/Main, Munich, Bremen, etc.) but I don't know for sure.

EDIT: To those who downvoted: Do you care to elaborate? Did you have different experiences in Berlin? (especially as technically-minded people)

One problem with your comment is that you do not actually address the point you quote. Instead, you present an anecdote about how you went to lots of places where you met new people, had the courage to talk to them and made friends.

I agree that what you described is a good way (maybe the only way) to make friends. But consider what proportion of attendees at those meetups ended up becoming your friends. I'm guessing a single digit percentage, at best.

For people who don't go to many social events/don't talk to many others there/don't deepen those ties as much, it's very easy to be lonely in basically any city. Making friends takes work, and success is not guaranteed; if you're not putting in that work for some reason, e.g. your personality, you'll end up without friends more likely than not.

Let me present my own anecdote: I grew up in Berlin, and I certainly met lots of new people through school, sports, study groups and so on, but I always kept those separate. If I were into golf, my fellow golfers would be my "golf people", nothing more. I don't tend to attempt conversations with strangers (or people I know, for that matter), so very few of those acquaintances even learned my name. In essence, I don't have any friends.

I wouldn't call myself lonely, though, since I'm happy that way. I wouldn't even know what I'd do with friends if I had any. But I'm pretty sure that there are lots of people (also in Berlin) who are living essentially the same friendless life as me and suffer for it.

> For people who don't go to many social events/don't talk to many others there/don't deepen those ties as much

Indeed! But my point is that making friendships in those cities is not prevented by the people or social norms in that country (while in Japan it apparently is, if I understood the previous comments correctly).

> But consider what proportion of attendees at those meetups ended up becoming your friends. I'm guessing a single digit percentage, at best.

Of course. However, if most people would refuse me due to social norms, that number would have been easily dropped to zero.

> I don't tend to attempt conversations with strangers (or people I know, for that matter), so very few of those acquaintances even learned my name. In essence, I don't have any friends.

But that's a purely personal choice, not something imposed onto you by the society, isn't it?

> Making friends takes work, and success is not guaranteed;

That's the gist of it.

In our society, people think human relationships are obvious, should be natural and self evident.

It's a concept that is reinforced by the medias, but also by the childhood memories where it kinda was.

But in the adult world, there are many social contracts and artificial boundaries you have to overcome, and connecting with people IS work.

What's more, it's work a lot of people are not trained to do anymore. And it's work with important consequences, good and bad.

I lived in Africa for a while, and there, you HAVE to connect to people to live. In some countries, basic informations and services can only be obtains by direct contact with another human. So the locals have no problem with loneliness, they make and break relations with ease.

Our modern society are making us kinda handicaped in that mesure, providing so many ways to avoid human contacts: delivery services, text informations everywhere, listings of things, etc. You don't have to ask where to find a product, what it contains, the price, then negociate it. You go to the shop, read, then pay, sometime even to a machine, or order it online.

It clicked, going back. I realized how easier my life was, and what a "cheat code" it is to just be able to talk to a random girl or joke with the guy next to me in the waiting room. I don't miss my times of being an introvert. It had zero benefits for myself.

We may mock Japan, but we are not making progress ourself.

Meeting groups of people is certainly a good starting point (and probably what I'd do if I was trying to meet knew people), but it can take time before making actual friends and it's not guaranteed.

I can give my experience. I've always been in some kind of sport club or another (not a gym but group activities such as swimming, boxing...), I go there a few times a week, sometimes for years at the same club. I eventually get to know the people there (but it can take months), sometimes we hang out but rarely have I made friends there.

I also went to events designed to actually meet new people (for instance, europeans living in NYC, that kind of things). Not much success there. I tend to dislike these events as I'm not really comfortable in social events where I don't know anyone.

Then I made very good friends in total random circumstances. For instance, talking to a guy sitting in a coffeeshop next to me, or with a fellow hiker at the top of a mountain.

A few years ago I would wholeheartedly agree with you, but for me things have changed unfortunately.

Working in a startup job each day leaves me exhausted - not exhausted in regards to meeting people, but to planning such meetings. Too often I will just end up stuck to the internet.

The people I used to do things with either moved away or don't respond to such suggestions anymore.

Social circles seem to fall apart quickly without some condensation nuclei.

I hope working hours are getting more predictable now, so I will try the Meetup route.

I should use meetups more too. One mistake I have made is assuming that the first people that respond positively are going to be good friends, and compatible. Some natural sifting and more effort is needed even then. And self-examination and feeling as to what you want! I think this whole process helps us feel who we are. And projecting that, attracting similar-accepting humans. (while working on listning more and becoing better humans too!) / I think a bunch of people on here struggle, for obvious reasons no fault of our own, but there are definitely solutions to be found (see my other comment on this too nearby for one more). I'm reading and learning more here also.

It's pretty hard to just up and make new friends in America past a certain age. Sometime after 30 a lot of people seem to decide that family and career are the only important things in life, and friends get relegated to occasional weekend meetups. They're certainly looking to make any new friends. So if you're in that age bracket and you're looking to meet people your own age, you're largely out of luck.

You start losing energy around your 30s due to a lower metabolism, increased responsibilities, and the beginnings of health issues (for a lot of people), so going out during the week when you're already coming home worn out from work can seem like too much work. Or if you're going to the gym to maintain your health, and coming home and cooking dinner, take the dog out, do dishes, etc, well suddenly it's 9pm already and maybe you've got an hour or two at most before you need to sleep, and hey, the tv's or internet is right there...

I do some things during the week with friends, but it's usually for a specific productive reason (playtest our game designs, or go to starbucks and write), and usually only once a week. But some weeks I'm too tired to do that.

This is exactly my experience. I felt that the only "western level" friendships of openness and directness [1] were made before college.

[1] To be fair each society has its own expectations on what interpersonal relationships should be like. American openness/directness likely isn't inherently virtuous.

Americans are direct only about a certain set of things.

My Thai friends are much more direct discussing appearance, for instance. As an American, that was actually quite a shock visiting Thailand -- but you get used to it and adjust, and now it feels weird that there is this taboo in the US.

Americans are more open and direct than Japan, but I don't know that I'd say they're particularly open and direct -- about the only thing I'd say Americans are uniquely is boisterous. But that's probably still only among the developed world.

That's a good point. We generally don't talk about our finances or deep personal life (vs the stereotypical Chinese aunt who demands to know your income as well as your dating history). American men tend to not talk about our emotions to one another.

I'm not sure how best to describe the difference. When I talk to Japanese "friends", I feel that I am talking to a mask, or that they're playing a part. In the States, on the subjects that we are open with, we seem to want to show our true selves, whatever that may mean. In Japan I feel that every aspect of your communication is guarded.

Its also because Japanese dont have much to talk about in the first place. Look at their media, its all tabloid level at best, and you would have a hard time finding people who talk about other things than completely mundane subjects in ANY context. I think this is mostly due to an education trying to kill any ounce of individual thinking.

How much time have you spent in Japan or among Japanese people?

Iirc he lives in Japan.

At least part of his position is true though -- the education system really doesn't cultivate critical thinking or original thought (other than the elite prep schools which are great at fostering individuality).

10 years and counting. Most of my working life with Japanese people.

This might not be for everyone, but I think alcohol helps a lot in this respect.

The most sincere and interesting discussion were late into the night where half the people were sleeping under the table and the few left awake were articulating thoughts they had very deep in heart.

There’s of course the part where everyone is a bit more lubricated, but there’s also the social protection of “being drunk” that helps to shield from repercutions if we step too far on people’s feelings.

I found this specially true for people who are pretty strong to alcohol, and tend to wait for these “end of party” moments to start discussing intimate feelings, even if they are still almost sober.

I find American friendship to be super complex and difficult to navigate. Since inviting certain people to certain places is almost mandatory in America, it is often hard to tell if an invitation or an expression of interest is sincere. In the Czech republic, I get far fewer invitations, but if they are in person (not through facebook) then they have always been sincere.

Non American here: what do you mean by "inviting certain people to certain places"? Like to a wedding?

Well, for example, if 11 members of the 20 person track team are going somewhere after practice, you have to invite everyone you meet even if you don't want them there. Even if its totally impractical to invite them there. If you're at a park throwing a Frisbee with some people you know, and you happen to be going somewhere with one friend afterwards, it's almost mandatory to invite the others who are there, even if you don't want to. I don't understand the rules, honestly. I was from a family who hardly ever invited anyone. But I've been frequently exposed to conversations about "who we've invited and hope doesn't come". As well as found myself in circumstances where I later realized that I was invited somewhere out of politeness rather than any desire that I be there. Both situations are really weird to me and it's just an extra complication that I don't need in my already tenuous understanding of social interaction.

In the Czech republic people don't talk as much and generally these situations occur rarely. And the example that I gave of the people in the park just doesn't happen in the Czech republic. There is no requirement to invite someone someplace just because you are going there yourself.

> There is no requirement to invite someone someplace just because you are going there yourself.

That wasn’t the effect you were demonstrating above. It was more “you have to invite [friend A] if you invite [friend B] from the same social group, unless you want [friend A] to think that you value them less than [friend B].”

Which is sometimes obviously what you want them to think—if you have known [friend B] for years and you’ve just joined the group that introduces you to [friend A], then hanging out solely with [friend B] (in a way that [friend A] will find out about, like by inviting them in front of them) is a way to assert that you’d like [friend A] to get to know you better, because you’re still not at the level where you feel comfortable adding them to your more close-knit friend group yet.

The problem comes when you’ve just joined a group and so only know everyone equally well (i.e. not that well), and yet only invite some of the group members somewhere anyway. This reads like the signal above, but without a justification: the people you chose to invite out did nothing to “deserve” the choice, and there’s no obvious thing (like more shared conversation) that you’re signalling that you’d like out of the people you didn’t invite. It can seem like you’re just sociopathically playing members of the group against each-other to win your favour.

But that’s really the only scenario where this applies: when picking a subset of acquaintances, from a shared group, to do something with that is usually reserved for friends. (It does come up a lot, because a “pool of shared acquaintances” describes a school pretty well. But it’s not nearly as much of a “thing” outside of that.)

I find that in the US, friend and acquaintance is hard to tell apart, because people are friendly and open in some ways. So I often can't tell who actually likes me well enough to figure out on deeper friendships.

Loneliness is in no way limited to Japan. What you describes pretty much applies everywhere. I dont see folks in the west making their best friends late in life.

Will men from the workplace drift into your lifelong pals? My cousin was there last winter and was making some solid headway into a social circle, but ended up disgracing himself in a comedy of errors involving tequila and a runaway golf cart. He's back now and boasts to me that he has a way with the Japanese but I think he's always fudged up the truth some.

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