How do you overcome fear?

I want to preface this by saying that this is not an attempt to get someone to feel sorry for me and become a language partner, but an earnest request for input, advice, etc. Although if this did end in me finding a language partner I certainly wouldn't be opposed to that.

 

First of all, I am from the United States and I'm a native English speaker. I joined italki in order to learn Japanese, and have since started taking lessons with a Japanese instructor (two so far.) I was fairly content with that being how I'd learn Japanese, but at the end of my lesson last night I was told that it would be best if I could find a Japanese language partner, someone in Japan that wants to improve their English (since I speak the language fairly clearly in his opinion), and use that as a supplement for his lessons in order to improve my Japanese faster. As it stands I don't speak a lot of Japanese, but that's really not the point of this discussion.

 

I know that one of the more common stereotypes about Americans is that they're very forward people and are outgoing, and while I've certainly met many of my countrymen that fit that bill, I've never been able to act that way. I've always been very shy when it comes to meeting new people, unless it's a casual conversation with someone working at a grocery store or convenience store. Even online, where you think it would be a lot easier to put yourself out there, I still find it difficult to just introduce myself to a complete stranger. Once I know someone I'm good at that point, open and talkative, no question is off limits really, but it's that initial point of contact that always gets me.

 

So what I'm wondering is whether anyone has any advice for how to do that in general, how to be more confident and brave, or how Japanese people prefer to be approached. Is it really okay to just send a message to a fellow italki user and say, "hello, my name is Jonathan and I'd really like to become your language partner and talk with you on Skype on a regular basis?" Should it be something so simple, or should it be a more complex introduction? I realize that for a lot of you these are probably very easy concepts and you don't think anything about them when you contact new people, but for me it's always been a problem.

 

So any advice you could provide on how to be brave, what's the best way to introduce yourself, whether there are any differences in how Japanese people like to be approached from the way Westerners like to be, or whatever else you have in your glorious, brave noggin would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sorry this is so long but I tend to be pretty wordy. Also thanks in advance for your reading this and your response, whatever it may be.

Telling time and asking questions. Telling time in Japanese is a little strange because there are some variants from the normal counting system, but thankfully not a lot. For instance, ichiji is one o'clock. That makes sense because ichi means one, and you just add 'ji' at the end. However four o'clock is not jiji, it's yoji (also nine o'clock is not kyuji but kuji.) Han is also half, so if you want to say 1:30 you would say ichiji han. AM and PM are gozen and gogo respectively, and are always before the time. So 1:30 pm would be gogo ichiji han. Apart from time I learned some very important concepts. The particle no, indicating ownership, requires the point of the sentence to be placed first. For instance a professor at a university would be daigaku no sensei (university no teacher). So since the teacher belongs to the university, university comes first. It's the same when formulating questions or statements about someone related to you; Watashi no kodomo wa Liam desu (My child is Liam.) I also learned some important vocabulary... 1. Doru = dollar 2. Ima = now 3. Gakusei = student 4. Senkou = major 5. Ryuugakusei = international student 6. Suma = wife 7. Sai = years old 8. Kagetsu = months old.

What would be the correct way to refer to a person from a specific city/town in Japanese? I used the term Osakajin earlier and then realized that that may not be correct or acceptable, or just may be a concept removed from the Japanese language. There's Nihonjin, of course, along with Amerikajin, Kanadajin, etc... but does the jin (person) work for cities as well?Also thank you in advance for considering/answering my question!

これわカタカナ質問です。 (ごめんなさいちょっとええ後です。) こんにちわみんなさん。私の名前わジョナタロウです。カタカナわ紛らわしです。私わタイプのええ後いまです。ごめんなさい。私の日本語わわるいです。 In katakana, the character ー is used to make vowel sounds longer. So in the name that I chose for myself, Jonatarou, why isn't it spelled ジョナタロー? I always thought that a 'u' after an 'o' in romaji was meant to prolong the vowel. 実例わケーキです。

Fundamental sentence structure and the use of no (の) When constructing a basic Japanese sentence, X wa Y desu is an essential sentence structure. In English, it means X is Y. So if I am introducing myself, I would say Watashi wa Jonathan desu. No (の) is an important joiner between two nouns. For instance if I wanted to say 'This is my cat', I would say 'Omai wa watashi no neko desu'. I learned that 'watashi' is the formal form of 'I', 'ore' is informal, and 'omai' is 'this is.' I also learned that 'boku' is okay to use for 'I' but that I should use 'watashi' in the beginning. I also learned that 'o' is a particle, the object of the action. In hindsight I'm still not entirely sure when 'o' is appropriate to use, so I will ask about that further in the next lesson.