Thank you all for the suggestions. I will start trying harder to make contact with people on the server. I believe the Japanese players in general are very reserved about shouting, but I think speaking in public areas is OK.

Today I tried 皆さん、失礼します。初心者のLSありますか (Excuse me, everyone, is there an LS for beginners?) in a fairly crowded Old Gridania market, but got no replies. But I'll keep trying.

And yeah, I was going to try posting on the Japanese Asura forum, even though it appears pretty dead. But apparently I'm only allowed to start one new thread per day. :/

I'm not familiar with Lodestone blogging, but I'll look it up. Thanks again for the pointers!