How to make North American friends vs Japanese friends
Often I find things the way North Americans do and the way Japanese do is 180 degrees different. How you make friends is one of these.
With North Americans, it is all about verbal communications and you need to do it as soon as you meet new people. If you can’t establish to communicate, you will be left out.
On the other hand, with Japanese, it is all about patient. Unless they are talkative women, usually they try to leave you alone and only have short conversations for first few times you see them. You have to patiently build up some comfort with them by seeing them often.
The perfect example was the first day in college I attended at my college in USA and the first week in my high school in Japan. Three minutes after the instructor gave students to talk to each other to get to know people, the class was full of chatting. Before the class was over, these freshman students were already acting like they knew each other for some time.
The first three days in my high school, the classroom was dead silent and I only opened my mouth for 6 times. “Good morning” and “Good afternoon” x 3 days. It took a week to students to really start talking to each other comfortably.