I posted a bit about what I did above, but I don't think I am a good person to learn from. Every single bit of my trip to now seems to be predicated on divine intervention or unbelievable luck, depending on what you believe.
One thing that I did, which I felt helped a lot, was running a board game group in Tokyo. It was not a minor endeavor in retrospect; I had to get a bigger apartment/house, I cooked, and I didn't charge money; I even paid for advertising on FB and Google. However, as a result, I met a lot of interesting people and met a lot of people from backgrounds normally wouldn't (IT of course, but media, manga/animation, caretaking, Soka Gakkai (!), politics, etc..)
However, I really did only do it to play board games, it wasn't a scheme to improve my work prospects. I didn't count the costs when doing it, since I considered them important to my mental health. This also created an organic way for me to get to know people from work better ("Hey, do you want to drop by and play some games with my friends?")
I'm not the OP or the parent post's author; however, pre-covid I'd give the usual answer of just join meetups, attend in person, follow the gang to the neighborhood bar or coffee or wherever they go, make friends, birds of a feather, etc. Post-covid, that scene seems non-existent to me. Being an introvert, it was certainly not a game I understood intuitively, outside of the fact that the groups were so small in my city as to be harmless to someone like me with the social skills of a loner. FWIW though, every single gig I've had for twenty years was among friends-of-friends with a common thread, typically art, music, science (OS, PL, DB), or culture (motos, bikes, skateboards).
What on earth is “the gang”. No where I’ve ever worked has there been some mob that followed each other to the same place after work. Mostly people just go on about their own lives after work. I’ve met and connected with many people at bars, coffee shops, and other hangout spots, never regarding work or tech and we usually live in completely different worlds, but that’s never lead to anything besides a pleasant conversation at best.
As for tech meetups, it’s admittedly been quite a while since I’ve gone to those, but in my past experience they were filled to the brim with entry level people with the same idea.
