Sorry for the late reply
@Buntaro !
I took a leap of faith and joined VR Chat (not with a VR headset though) for the first time yesterday. I went in with the intention of, at the very least, listening to Japanese people speak casually (I already do this on Discord sometimes, but I wanted to experience it differently)
I joined the common world most people join called "Japan Shrine" but there were almost no Japanese people in it, instead full of foreigners (not even any americans) speaking english or their own language, even heard some chinese in there
I eventually left that world because there weren't any Japan regional servers open for it, only US servers. I eventually found two other worlds which had Japanese servers. The first one was easy to join, because it was meant to be study practice for english speakers trying to learn japanese, and oddly, there were only japanese people in there. I say oddly because those kinds of servers are usually where Japanese people would avoid, but I guess maybe they were there to meet foreigners and help them. I just listened to what they were saying till they all disappeared back to reality. I left and went to another world, but this time it was a chat room meant for japanese speakers only. They had a test on the wall meant to deter non-speakers from entering the lobby (which I later found out to be a common thing). Of course, I didn't really have the skill to pass the test, so I cheated, with the intention to just listen and bother nobody.
There was a well similar to one you'd find next to a shrine for purifying your body to prepare yourself to stand before it or pray, with the ladles and everything (mostly decoration but I was able to pick the ladles up and pretend). Then I went ahead inside and there was a piano and a strange person walking sideways. I decided to play chopsticks on the piano since that's all I know how to play
it seemed like they were watching and enjoyed the performance, but they didn't say anything and of course, neither did I. Then I walked into a room and that's where I found a whole bunch of people talking together. I went near them so I could just listen, but they started trying to talk to me
my heart was already beating hard enough from being there in front of them, even as just avatars in a game. I tried to use the text box to avoid speaking and said things like 日本語を聞きたい because I only wanted to listen, but they pretty much got me to speak eventually...
one of them asked me questions like if my main language was english (in english), and I kept nodding to answer yes or no. It was difficult to communicate like that so I eventually mustered up the courage to answer them
(you have to understand, even if we were just going to be talking only in english, I would feel like this)
They basically told me that they wanted me to change my avatar because they wanted everyone to have "loli" avatars, and since I was new it was difficult but I eventually figured out how to change it! They were patient with me in helping me do it, and I used Japanese whenever I could think straight (1% of the time)... all my pronunciation skills went out the window of course, half the time I had an accent so hard even I noticed it
I had such terrible anxiousness from the encounter that I couldn't even properly speak in my native language... It was worth it though, even though I could barely breathe because at least I made a couple friends
Anyway, my point of this story is just to reinforce the reason I don't do calls
I wouldn't say it's scary, but it makes me have very strange feelings that make my heart beat like crazy, makes it hard to breathe and think straight, almost social anxiety but maybe it's not that... (メンヘラじゃなくてですよ!!) anyway, imagine what would happen if I did a video chat with someone
I would practically have a heart attack! Besides, other than at work, I don't even speak english either cause I still never know what to say even in English and I don't really have people to talk to like that, not that I want to anymore... Even in English I pretty much exclusively use text messaging. However, I do feel more comfortable with a regular voice chat and someone is interested in talking to me on Discord. I'm just worried that I won't be able to keep the conversation going, and I'll have to be using a translator way too much. Luckily he understands English, he just can't speak it (and I'm not surprised by the way, I know another language that I pretty much 100% understand but I can't speak/have never spoken before, so I know the feeling). I just hope it won't make it too difficult to communicate. I'm also one that likes to ask a lot of questions so I can understand "why" for everything, and since google usually can't answer my most peculiar questions, I'd have to deal with not knowing/learning a lot of the things I wanted to learn. I guess that's okay though since over time if I get more practice I'll be able to realize those memories from my past experiences and put the pieces together to understand it in the future.
I'm thankful that you're making a thread for finding partners to practice language exchange with!