I've gone on two separate trips. I did have this feeling at times. What helped though was finding groups of people who shared hobbies with me. This way I could chat with them, even using Google Translate, and have some form of that connection.
Yeah but just in general it seems like they're an insular society, don't have random big parties and stuff. It's all like rigid, at the specific bar area. I went to a language meetup and met some cool ones that spoke enough English. But that was about as far as I got. All the "side quests" were with foreigners who I met.