How to make friends in Nagoya Gifu and Mie, Japan.

How to make friends in Nagoya Gifu and Mie.

It is really hard to have local Japanese friends especially in Nagoya because compered to people in Tokyo, Nagoya’s people tend to be xenophobic to outsider including Japanese from other regions. Nagoya's people were born and raised in Nagoya and work in Nagoya due to so many job opportunities in "Toyota Empire", that needs a lot of slaves. That’s why they already have their own community and don't need to make new friends. However, recently there a lot of Japanese people from other regions to seek rewarding jobs in Aichi (unfortunately they will all become slaves).  I am one of guys from countryside in Japan and work in Nagoya.  I realized participating English conversation communities is good ways to make friends because most of English conversation communities in Nagoya consist of members from other regions. Some of them experienced living in foreign countries and know how important it is to make friends in a new place so they are kind and open to others.  I would say of course it works for foreigner as well! 

Three years ago, I became an organizer of an English conversation community. As I worked as an organizer, I realized that English conversation communities must more contribute to Japanese society where a lot of people from different countries and have different cultures live together. 

So, I would like to write this web page to introduce some of English speaking communities in Nagoya that can help you learn Japanese culture and Japanese language and assimilate into Japanese society. 

Attending language community in Nagoya

Nagoya has a several language communities. Some of them are mainly for people who want to communicate in English and others are for language exchange. If you can speak English, you can make Japanese friends easily. Below is some language communities in Nagoya that I recommend.

English Cochin Nagoya

First of all, let me explain, our community "English Cochin Nagoya". Founded by a young aviation engineer from Tokyo to make friends in 2004, this community has helped people from other region make friends. Our community have been for people who want to communicate in English and have had meeting in almost every Saturday evening for 15 years.

In each meeting there are not only Japanese but also people all over the world. Some of then are residents in Aichi, Mie and Gifu and others are tourists. You can meet a lot of Japanese and foreigners who work in various industries and have various backgrounds. We welcome everyone regardless of their age or country.

Activity in our Meeting

All conversation in our meeting is done in English. During each session, we have free conversation on the first half ( 1 hour), and then moving on to discussion on certain topic chosen by the chairperson of the day(1hour). Discussion topic is about not only Japan but also science, entertainment, other culture and so on. You can read some of the articles used in our discussion below.

After meeting we usually go to izakaya for dinner and in this time we use English and Japanese depending on participants so this is good opportunity to learn Japanese. 

Our Meeting Schedules

Our meeting schedules are on Facebook attached blow. 

Due to the Covid19 pandemic we irregularly hold 40 minutes meeting online and if you click "good(いいね in Japanese)" you can get the latest information of our community and activities on Facebook.

Contact Us

You can ask any questions about our community through messenger application.

コーチン

We would really appreciated to click "good" to our Facebook community page as well when contacting us.

Note: Our group is organized by volunteer members so we can’t response your inquiry quickly.

Nagoya English Forum

Founded over 30years ago, ”Nagoya English Forum” have been for Japanese who want to talk about various topics in English. This group also explains it's activities on Facebook. 

It's regular meeting is usually held at Nagoya International Center. You have to check the latest schedules and discussion topic on Facebook. 

Nagoya International Center

Note: Due to the pandemic, meeting place and schedule might be changed so please check the latest information on Facebook.

Nagoya English Conversation Club (名古屋英会話クラブ)

Nagoya English Club is one of those English Learning Communities across Japan. This community is a group comprised mainly of Japanese members but of course you can attend it.  All conversation in a meeting is done in English. You have to apply your participation through below link before.

http://www.nagoyaenglish.net/

I attended this meeting on August 2020 so I will show you what kind activity is done in this meeting.

Meeting timeline

I attended meeting  in the Saturday morning and Saturday meeting timeline is blow.

Free conversation

In this time all participants are 10 ( 2 women and 8 men). Participant's age is 20s to 50s. When applying on the internet we have to tell our English level. Staff woman guided us the table depending on our English level.  Then we did "free conversation". This is a small talk but some of Japanese are not good at speaking English so staff provide us below small talk topics written in Japanese.

Group work

After "free conversation in English", we did group work. The topic of group work depends on each meeting and we can't know it before participating. In this day, we explain our family members along with topics provided by a staff. For example, topic said who is the most adventurous? and I explained my farther who loved climbing mountains are most adventurous in my family. He used to eat every mushrooms that he corrected in mountains and he was not sure whether they were poisonous or not. When I was a child, I ate poisonous one that he took and suffered from severe stomachache.