Skyping a Japanese friend

Ok, I became friends with a Japanese girl on Twitter about a month ago. We tweet back and forth all the time. We talk in both English and Japanese romaji. Unfortunately, it takes me a while to translate what she says and figure out what to say next. She's 17 and she seems very nice. But when she asked me about skyping, I started to get nervous.

I'm sure she can speak a fair amount of understandable English on the spot. I'm not that way with Japanese yet. I tried to tell her this, but she would still like to Skype me.

I'm scared because I have no idea what she looks like and I don't know how long I can keep a conversation going. I don't want her to think I don't want to be her friend.

What can I do to make this go smoothly?

request a picture before hand if you feel uncomfortable. Skyping doesnt necessarily mean video chat. Can just voice chat. You dont have to speak Japanese you know. Just speak your own language and you guys will work it out eventually when you talk. It will become natural without you thinking too much about it when you guys chat. Just ask questions about her and what she does and answer. It will flow naturally and you guys will be ok speaking in english.

When i met my girlfriend, we emailed each other 2 times and then hopped onto MSN voice chat. Then onto skype. we didnt video chat until i confessed to her that i liked her which was 5 months after we got to know each other. Now we are together in England as a couple for nearly 2 years now. I wasnt that nervous. It was my first time to voice chat to someone 1-1. The first thing that struck me was how good her japanese was. And I kept going on about it for about 20 minutes. She was the first japanese person I spoke to online.

also, my japanese was terrible. couldnt even manage a sentence. i was always using Japenglish!! ~ speak english but put the few japanese words in i know as practice.

If you can draw, no matter how badly, a pen and paper comes in handy when skype video chatting. It gets things going at awkard moments and can even produce a laugh, especially with my poor efforts.

I say go for it and have fun.

Thanks for the answers! And to the last one, that is a great idea! Plus, I do like to draw.