I’ve been reading 拝啓、在りし日に咲く花たちへ 1 MFC | L26 (features 2 girls who don’t know each other are writing letters to each other, in a library book). And it got me thinking it might be cool to have a Japanese pen pal… Which I’ve occasionally tried to find on some random websites, but never had any luck.
So that got me thinking… Maybe ppl here would be interested? Medium could be physical or digital (I’d love to handwrite letters personally) or even hybrid (handwrite a letter, but scan/send a picture, so you don’t have to worry about going to the post office, or giving away information like your address)
Anyway would anyone be interested? I could set up the post as a wiki with a table, if there’s broader interest. Or feel free to send me a PM if you’d rather not post here
Alternately, if someone has successfully found a Japanese penpal from a website, and wants to recommend - feel free
My thought was to specifically keep this among the Natively community here… and I don’t think we have any native Japanese speakers on here… so yes, learners are welcome
If you wanna pal with me specifically, just shoot me a PM & lmk whether you wanna do physical or digital, are cool with handwriting or prefer typed, etc
If you mean just in general, I’m waiting to see if one or two more people are interested, and if so I’ll make the main post a wiki, with a table for ppl seeking pen pals
your message kind of makes me think of how cities get twinned and people visit each other from those cities.
I wonder if we could find a small friendly website where Japanese people support each other learning English, and we could twin with them, and through that, people could become pen pals
probably a moonshot and I don’t browse the web near enough in Japanese to find something like that, but it could be a fun way to organise it.
Tbh the appeal for me is actually to do this with non-native speakers, bc I think it’s a lower barrier of entry/connection. Your idea sounds cool - but definitely well beyond me
I think this is a pretty neat idea to practice using Japanese, but I don’t think I’m on a high enough level yet to actually be able to do that, especially since I have written very little in Japanese (of course that’s all the more reason to do just that).
I just have to mention the app Slowly. It’s an app that adds in a delay between when you send a message and when the other person recieves it, so it feels like sending real mail. It has users from all over the globe, so it should be possible to find Japanese pen pals there too.
This sounds nice! I looked at the website descriptions and it seems that one can practice handwriting in Japanese as well by sharing the scanned version of the letter as photos with the pen pal.
Looks possibly cool. Do you know just how much of a delay it adds?
I signed up for now, and have browsed a bit, but am kind of overwhelmed (normal for me)… still, seems probably more fruitful than HelloTalk though (not a pen pal site). (tho sadly I’ve already seen one れないの目的で送る手紙は拒絶 ＆ ブロックします。on someone’s profile… so I guess that’s an issue there too (everywhere)…)
I haven’t registered for account yet though as I’m not planning to find random pen pals. Prefer to exchange for the purpose of practicing Japanese only.
That is such a sweet idea! Thank you for sharing I signed up just out of curiosity (not that I have time or even need for penpals but hey) and what can I say, it works I already received a letter from a German lady and am now waiting for a letter from a Japanese person. (I did not have to do anything, they reached out.) Let’s see how this works out
This looks really nice, thank you! I love penpals and never managed to find a site that works. This looks great, I’ll see if anyone in Korea is interested.
I’ve connected with a few ppl here now. So I’m good at this point, but that’s great to know about for the future. Have you used it before/do you know anyone who has?
I decided to try slowly, so if anyone is interested in being penpals over there, DM me and I’ll send you my ID code. I need an excuse to write in Japanese or I’m never going to do it.
Just a heads up that it tried to get me to confirm my account through some third party service, but I just exited out of it and it doesn’t seem to be nagging me to that my account is unconfirmed.
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and have two questions.
I already received a letter from a German lady and am now waiting for a letter from a Japanese person. (I did not have to do anything, they reached out.) Let’s see how this works out 
