But… when I try to change it so that Swedish is the default input methods …. I can’t. Uh. Right.

… huh? Why can’t I drag and arrange my input methods in order of preference?

The deal is, whenever I open a new … window. Or tab, in Safari… I get it in Japanese.

Imagine this scenario: I open up a new tab in my browser! I decide to boldly go where none other has boldly gone before, and I type in “www.google.com” BUT!

BUT!!!! I do not GET “www.google.com” in the browser.

No sir. I don’t. I get “っっw。ごおgぇ。cおm”

in the browser.

And this is not what I wanted! Nope. No sir. Not anywhere or any way.

Can you feel my frustration shining? For now, I’ve turned Japanese off, so any time I talk to my girlfriend or whoever I will do so in “Konnichiwa watashi no chinchin wo sutte kudasai” romaji. Anyone got any nice clues on this one? It’s completely unbelievable that they’d not realize that people, sometimes, would prefer not to have their languages thrown at them in alphabetic order. (Yes, “Japanese” comes before “Swedish”.) Or is it that every tester was an American, thus “English” comes before “Japanese” and it’s not a “problem”?

EDIT: I finally figured this out. The reason it was acting up was because of 3 separate factors which, combined, do not work:

1. Japanese input.
2. Swedish as alternative input
3. English as operating system language.

The fix is to change the OS language to Swedish. I personally hate having the OS in Swedish, but I’m apparently given no choice. Better that than no Japanese though, I suppose.

Actually, I knew I’d failed all along. I’m actually surprised I got that high.

Next time Kalle will get the opportunity to (with any chance of success) try this test: approximately 2015.

Yes, I do indeed feel like a fucking loser. Now back to your regularly scheduled (albeit seldomly updated) blog.

And I bought an iPhone. For anyone who speaks Japanese (or for that matter, Chinese or any other language which requires more than the average a-z), I can inform you that which I had wished somebody out there had informed me in a straightforward manner when I started digging into this over a year ago.

Yes, you can use Japanese and Swedish (or whatever combination) on the iPhone simultaneously. I can get my åäö’s which my Japanese cell couldn’t spit out for the life of it (me), and I can get 日本語 to slither out of it as well. You can send SMS’es within Sweden in Japanese, and in general, you can use them as you would in Japan, except that they also properly support Swedish.

In case you are confuzzled about how to do this, the Swedish (with presumed English translation in parentheses) menu alternatives for getting Japanese enabled is as follows:

Inställningar (Settings) > Allmänt (General) > Internationellt (International) > Tangentbord (Keyboard) > Japanska (Japanese) > QWERTY or Kana (whichever you prefer).

This time I actually did my homework. I won’t fail this time around.

It’s the first time I go by myself to the test center. I was surrounded by friends the first two times, and I’m not entirely sure what impact this will have on my focus and such. Not to be mean to my friends or anything, but I have a feeling I will just end up being more concentrated over it, but it may also be that I lose some energy due to not being mutually “pumped”. We’ll find out soon enough (Sunday, two days from now).

After that I only really have ‘get rid of a ton of shit’ and ‘get on the plane(s) home to Sweden’ left, really.

In any case, check if out if you’re curious. I’ll continue writing here as well, obviously, so there’s no need to take a crash course in Japanese in order to continue enjoying my deep, philosophical enlightenment. I wrote that with a straight face, by the way.

Those of you who do understand Japanese, I’ll gladly take any comments you have on errors in the language, but please don’t get too nitpicky on me. I’ll lose my will to write if I get 15-page essays about everything I did wrong every time I post a new entry if you do.

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”.

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!

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…

“通学鞄を肩に引っかけて俺は気乗りのしない足取りで文芸部に向かった。”

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.