2008 was probably the fastest year I’ve ever experienced. I had only just gotten used to it no longer being 2007 when it suddenly was 2009. I started 2008 off getting prepared to come here to Japan in April, so the beginning of the year more or less flew by as well. I remember whining about there being something to do every single day there at the end right before I got on that airplane. Things don’t seem to have slowed down since.

In a couple of months I will have been here for an entire year. I haven’t done nearly all the things I wish I’d have done by now, but I still have plenty of time left to play around with, and now that I’ve decided to take it a little easier with my studies from here on, I will have time to do the things I haven’t had time for until now.

I wish everyone a happy new year.

I’m back home now, after taking that JLPT exam, and I must admit it didn’t go very well. The first part went worse than it usually does, and had lots of things I had to guess the answer to, the listening part went worse than it usually does, but went well enough, and the third part went worse than it usually does, which is to say it went pretty much to crap. I hope it went better for you others.

Then again, I’m comparing the outcome of “the real thing” to the exams I’ve taken at home, and I can only say there’s quite a big difference, even though I put in the effort to make it as similar as possible (time restraints etc. were all the same).

What had me worried before the exam was whether I’d end up not actually hearing the listening part, speaker-wise, but that wasn’t a problem at all. I may still pass, but that’d take some major luck. If I fail, I’ll be disappointed but not “you’re shitting me” surprised.

I bought two onigiris and one triangle-sandwich, two bars of chocolate and a bottle of tea on my way there, and realized that I should’ve bought more food and less chocolate.

There is a supposed 50 (I think?) minute break between the 2nd and 3rd parts but for some odd reason, we had to listen to the 12th problem one more time and so we only got something like 25 minutes of lunch-break. I wanted to eat more but I didn’t have anything with me and going to a store was out of the question (everyone else goes to the store on the lunch break so the lines are too long).

In any case, that’s it for 2Q, on to 1Q. I decided from the beginning that I’d take this one once and then move on, no matter how it went. With a bit of luck I might pass after all, so that’s what I’m hoping for. Will know “in the middle of February”.

It’s midnight between Friday and Saturday now, and on Sunday morning I will be taking that JLPT exam I’ve been going on about all this time. It’s been a slightly bumpy road (starting my kanji studies less than a year earlier) but with a bit of luck and a good attitude I should pass without problems. Then on to Ikkyuu (the level 1 exam) next year, and I can go home without regrets. Tomorrow I’m waking up at 8.30 am simply because I usually wake up around 10.00, and I don’t want to feel sleepier than necessary on Sunday.

In the morning, knowing me, I will get very little studies in and will simply doodle about doing nothing special, then dinner with the girlfriend in the evening, and then to bed early since I get up early. I will hopefully be tired enough from waking up earlier than usual on Saturday that I’ll fall asleep despite nervousness etc. Yeah, I’m pretty nervous about this in the end. I have this one shot and I paid money and all that so I don’t know how I will react to this all ultimately. I don’t think I’ve ever prepared for something for as long and as intensively as I have for this exam, so I guess it’s no wonder I’m antsy.

Anyway, wish me luck. I won’t actually know whether I pass or fail until February (…!) but I bet I’ll have a feeling whether it went well or not. The others of you out there — Thomas, Mark, Shiho, and all the damn Swedes zerg-rushing Kyoto, new and old friends alike, good luck on Sunday!

Awhile back, I posted about having tried the 2006 Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験) for Nikyuu, i.e. “level 2″. The JLPT is divided into 4 levels, where 1 is the highest, and I am going to take the level 2 exam in a little less than a month (December 7th). Today, I once more gave it a try, this time the 2005 JLPT exam (the book I bought has 2004, 2005, and 2006 in it), to see where I’m at. I intend to do the final 2004 exam a week or so before the real exam, just to stay warmed up.

The test is divided into 3 sections - a kanji/vocabulary section, a listening comprehension section, and a reading comprehension section. The third section is by far the most difficult of the 3, and it comprises 200 of the 400 total points, that is, it is half the test.

In any case, my results in the individual sections below:

1. Kanji/vocabulary: 57/65 correct (87.7%) => 87.7 points
2. Listening comprehension: 22/27 correct (81.5%) => 81.5 points
3. Reading comprehension: 36/59 correct (61.0%) => 120 points

Thus I scored 288/400 points, which puts me at 72%. With a 12% margin and almost a month left of studying, I think this will go okay. Now my biggest enemy is, of course, relaxing TOO much because I think it’ll be a breeze.

I think back on when I in May-June asked one of my teachers if she thought I’d be able to pull off the Nikyuu test and she said “Um… probably not, but you should give it a try!”. I’ve come a long way since then, if I may say so myself.

Keep your fingers crossed for me on December 7th, regardless. I’ll update (on this topic) again once I’ve done the 2004 test in about 3 weeks and again once I’ve taken the exam. I guess it’s almost time to start focusing on Ikkyuu (Level 1) at this point. That won’t exactly be detrimental to my Nikyuu exam or anything, so why not…

So tell me, do you have occult blood? I’d never heard of this before and at first thought it was a classic case of Engrish. Then I looked it up and it actually exists…

occult blood n.
Blood that is present in amounts too small to be seen and can be detected only by chemical analysis or microscopic examination.
(dictionary.com)

Who would’ve thought that I’d learn new English words (or in this case, expressions, since it’s several words) in Japan.

Today, I went to my school (Nihongo Center, in Kyoto) to talk to the principal (Hideo Kurita) regarding “my future”. The deal is, for the last 6 months, I’ve been studying together with a group consisting almost exclusively of Chinese. The Chinese students tend to all have the goal of wanting to take the “Ryuugaku shiken”, a Japanese proficiency test aimed for foreign students wishing to enter university in Japan. It so happens that every single student in my class wants to continue to university after they’ve completed their Japanese studies — everyone except me.

Yes, I did at some point consider the idea of entering a university in Japan, weighing the good against the bad and so on, and came to the conclusion that what I can get here, is more or less the same — or not as good — as what I can get for free in Sweden. If I wish to work in Japan after graduating from the university, I will not be able to present a shiny graduation certificate from a shiny Japanese university, but at the same time, I somehow doubt I can get into a shiny university here anyway (unless I work my ass off studying for the entrance exam, which would detract from my studies of the language itself).

In any case, I am here exclusively to learn Japanese now, with the additional desire to learn the Japanese people, from a cultural, sociological, economical, etc. point of view. I am still sort of haunted by the clock in my head ticking and going “hey, happy birthday buddy, you’ll be 36 by the time you graduate from uni” but I’ll cope with that when that day comes. I also believe that having spent 2 years in a country so utterly different from my own will be a valuable merit on my curriculum vitae.

So back to today — I, being the sole student wishing to learn Japanese and ultimately take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (the level 1 one), among a group of around 20 people, am now without a class. The school originally informed me that there would be a separation of the class into two groups — those who want to go to university and those who do not — but as things stand, both groups will be “those who do”. Conclusively, the principal of my school offered to find me another school.

What a guy. He’s not only willing to let me go to another school (thus my school tuitions to his school end), but he’s also willing to find a school for me, and to introduce me to the school. This means a huge deal in the Japanese society — it’s a world of difference whether the student contacts the school and goes “Hey folks, I’d like to switch to your school” and whether the principal contacts the school and goes “Hey there, I have a student whose needs I am not able to accomodate, so I wanted to see if you were up for taking him in”. In retrospect, maybe he thinks I’m a pain in the ass, and can’t wait to get rid of me.

Here’s the funny deal though. When he first said he would look into other schools for me, I decided to do some searching on my own. Me and my girlfriend looked around long and hard and found the one school that we both thought would suit me the best. After I’d talked to the principal about whether or not I should actually switch schools (I was wavering on that one — still am, actually — because I only want to switch if it makes a big difference in the quality of my studies), he said that he had this one school in mind for me. I noted that I had looked around and found a school as well, and he asked me what its name was. I said I didn’t remember, but that it was located by the Imadegawa station. He grinned and said “Well, that’s the school I wanted to introduce you to.” That’s quite promising, I’d say.

So after he’d called the school (for the record, the school’s name is Kyoto Japanese Language School) and asked if the idea of me switching there was possible, he suggested I go there and take a look at the school for myself. I went to the new school, and spoke to one secretary-like woman about the school in general and various procedures required of me were I to accept, and then I spoke to one of the teachers about the possible classes I might end up in, and she even brought with her some school books that they were using in class right now. There would be an examination “placement test” deal which ultimately would determine which class I ended up going to. They had a lot of classes on various levels fairly close to where I feel that I am now, so that seemed quite promising.

The new school is actually a little more expensive than the one I’m in now (but only a few hundred $US per year), and I have to pay the examination fee (about $500US), which I have already paid for for my current school, but ultimately I have to look at it from a “where will I learn the most efficiently” point of view, so it’s highly likely that I will accept the offer and switch schools.

The new term begins October 16th, and I’ve asked for this weekend to think this through before I make a decision. I’ll tell both schools what I decide on Sunday evening, I’ve decided, so I don’t do anything hasty that I end up regretting.

Yesterday I took the 2006 JLPT level 2 exam, the same level that I’m going to take in December, to see where I’m at and what my weakness is. The test is divided into 3 parts — kanji/grammar (35 minutes), listening comprehension (40 minutes), and reading comprehension (70 minutes).

The kanji/grammar part was surprisingly difficult, but I ended up figuring the right answer out on a lot of the questions anyway. The listening comprehension part was shockingly easy. I had heard before that the listening comprehension part of the JLPT is quite easy, but I didn’t expect it to be quite this easy. The reading comprehension was a bummer, because as I was doing it, a big argument ensued outside my door, which I knew instantly would cause me to not be able to concentrate and thus fail.

So I stopped the timer, put the book aside, and walked outside to see what was going on. That’s another story. When I returned, I was still on “problem 1″ though, and it took me nearly 40 minutes to finish it, out of the 70 minutes I had at my disposal. Once I moved on, things moved a little quicker, but I still ended up running 20 minutes over before I had gotten to the last question in the test.

Because of that I of course failed the test. The required percentage is 60% and I got 56%. If I hadn’t gone 20 minutes over (i.e. if my answers to the questions I didn’t even get to when the time was up were to count), I would have gotten 70%, which would have passed me with a 10% margin.

Thus, my #1 problem right now is reading speed, though I can’t help thinking that I would’ve done a better job if I’d not been disturbed halfway thru.

Some stats:

- Part 1 (kanji/grammar) — 65/100 points.
- Part 2 (listening comprehension) — 74/100 points.
- Part 3 (reading comprehension) — 85/200 points
(Part 3, if we ignore the fact I ran 20 mins over — 138/200 points)

Total: 224/400 = 56%
(Ignoring 20 mins overtime: 277/400 = 69.25%)

Since I got here in April, a few people have gone out of mine and others’ lives, sometimes just as abruptly as they entered. Since we’re all here temporarily, with different set times of stay, friends depart as we stay, and we are reminded of when our day comes.

It sounds a little overdramatic, maybe.

The first person to go home was actually this twitchy little Swede who I briefly spoke to. He was here for all of 3 days, even though he had paid to be here for 3 months (paid the school tuition, and for the apartment he was to stay in). A day or so after I arrived, the landlord asked me to go “speak to this guy who’s from Sweden, cause I can’t figure out what his deal is”. The guy was 18, had just graduated from high school, and was completely terrified at the thought of being away from mom. He had called his mom the day after he arrived, and she’d immediately booked him a plane ticket back home. Stupid mom. In any case, he was now dead set on returning, and nothing I said would change his mind. “It runs in my family. We get nervous, stressed out.” That’s what he said. I can’t claim to be a psychologist so I’ll leave it at that.

The next people to leave were Daniel and Elin. They were here for 10 weeks (roughly 3 months), and although I didn’t actually know them very well, I had still talked to them a lot and felt like I sort of knew them.

After that came Jun, The Korean Guy, who left about a month ago if I recall. I didn’t know him that well, but Rojio (no clue on the spelling), a spanish girl, had begun to date him, so she was kind of devastated when he went home.

Then yesterday, Ricardo. Ricardo’s originally from Guatemala I think, but he’s lived his whole life in Sweden, so he was in the Sweden-group. He’s also one of the closer friends I have here so far, so him leaving was a bit of a bummer. Lee, a chinese girl who’s been dating him basically since a month after we got here, was and still is devastated about his departure.

I guess what affects me the most is seeing the one being left behind. I know that at some point I’ll be going back home, and I’ll be leaving everything that has taken on a meaning here during my stay behind. I will be leaving my girlfriend behind, and although we are talking about long term plans and what to do from here on, we will be apart for a long while, regardless. At least 6 months. Possibly a year. Possibly even more.

My original plan has always been to stay here for 2 years, but with my current level of proficiency, I may be ready to take the highest-level test in Japanese proficiency as soon as March, next year. If so, there really is no meaning in me staying here for another whole year. It would be a waste of money that I never had to begin with (student aid).

So now I’m looking at maybe only being here for another 6 months. We’ll see though. If I’m 100% sure that I can pull off that exam, I will go back in April. Otherwise I will stay another year. Decisions, decisions.

Alright, I’m done with the Nikyuu (level 2) kanjis (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). Now a short break in working on new kanjis and focusing on learning a shitload of words which have the kanjis I’ve studied up until now in them.

The actual exam is December 7th, so it’s not a lie to say that I’m on schedule. Then again, some kanjis tend to take me about a month or so before they actually “sit there”, so I think later than now could’ve been a mistake. And besides, my ORIGINAL plan was to be done with these little blobs in the beginning of September but I ran into a brain fart moment (it wasn’t pretty).

Anyways, 79 days left. Now to focus on vocab, grammar, and listening comprehension. I pretty much think I’ve got reading down, considering I score higher than a lot of the Chinese in my class but I won’t neglect that either.