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As the number of Japanese learners in Indonesia is the second largest in the world, contact situations between Japanese and Indonesian are expected to increase more. With this in mind, I carried out a comparative study on Indonesian learners of Japanese and Japanese native speakers to examine the functions of back-channels within and between utterances. The key findings are as follows. First, with the back channels within utterances used Japanese native speakers, most (69.4%) were for the function of ‘attentive listening’, but with back channels between utterances, there was no difference in the frequency of ‘attentive listening’, ‘understanding’ and ‘agreement’ functions. On the other hand, with the back channels within utterances used by Indonesian learners, the functions of ‘understanding’, ‘agreement’ and ‘attentive listening’ all accounted for about one third each, while with back channels between utterances the function of ‘agreement’ was the greatest (42.9%), with ‘attentive listening’ and ‘understanding’ less frequent in usage. Though low in frequency, this study also paid attention to the functions of ‘opposition’ and ‘emotional expression’. Within utterances, Japanese native speakers never use back channels for ‘opposition’ and merely 6.9% for ‘emotional expression’. Between utterances, they use the function of ‘emotional expression’ 13.6% of the time, in other words twice as much as within utterances. Within utterances, Indonesians use back channels for ‘opposition’ 1.5% and ‘emotional expression’ 2.9%, while between utterances they use ‘opposition’ 9.1%. For Japanese native speakers, it is likely that the functions of back-channels of ‘opposition’ can be a barrier to first face-to-face conversation, and disrupt conversation. ‘Attentive listening’ within utterances and ‘emotion’ between utterances are common among Japanese native speakers, but are less common in Indonesian learners. Even with Japanese native speakers, ‘attentive listening’ is more common within utterances than between utterances. Therefore, ‘attentive listening’ back channels within utterances and ‘emotion’ back channels between utterances can make Indonesian learners sound uninterested and can be a barrier to smooth conversation. However, because the function of ‘emotional expression’ shows active participation in conversation more than any other functions of back-channels, it needs to be introduced in Japanese language learning.