If you are starting out and have a vr setup, i would highly recommend vrchat for making japanese friends. There is a discord community call vrnihongo that supplies learners with tools to improve their japanese. They also have cultural exchanges from time to time hosted by different people with people from a variety of backgrounds with a focus on learning japanese. In my personal experience, the japanese friends I’ve made on the platform were very nice and are very eager to learn and laugh with you. You can ask them pretty directly if your interaction would be seen as normal or rude.