When can new players make characters here again?

[indirect]

I made a character on Odin, because it was one of the only still really populated servers from what I could see... but very few people speak English

[Alhanelem]

Answer: When enough people move off Asura (and Bahamut) onto other servers. It will remain closed until population balance improves.

The whole reason it's closed is so that people will start to populate other servers and reduce the congestion and issues present on the most populated servers. Rather than hope you can enter Asura, invite friends and build a community on your current server. That's the whole point.

Remember you have the autotranslate dictionary to allow some communication with the Japanese playerbase and vice versa. While some may prefer to stick with their own, it's still an oppertunity to find friends. Not all Japanese are xenophobic- in fact it's really an unfair stereotype.

There are people on every server. You don't need Asura's server population to find and make friends. Shiva is a fairly quiet place but there is still an active NA community and there are people you can meet and do stuff with. again: the whole point of the biggest servers being closed is to both resolve issues relating to overcrowding on those servers, and to breathe some more life into other servers.