Once again I’ve been neglecting to write in this blog and
I’ll be honest it is the same reason as always. I’m rapidly learning that a
picture is worth a thousand words because the figures for my paper are taking
for-ev-er to get right. Furthermore I was locked away in the bowels of hell
(the Spring8 experimental hall I kid) for a good nine days doing crazy things
with x-rays. As you can imagine not much time for anything else.
In fact there has been one more thing that has been keeping
me busy the past few months. A fair while ago I had decided that my Japanese
language progression was getting a bit stale and so as an incentive to do
better I enrolled myself into this July’s Japanese Language Proficiency Test
(JLPT). There are several levels (1-5) of difficulty with N1 being the most
difficult test and N5 being the easiest. I felt that the N3 would present
enough challenge without being overwhelmingly difficult given my limited time
resources.
This was way back in like April however and sadly I didn’t
take the studying too seriously, due to other workloads, so by the time June
came around I realized I’d done almost no studying. Panic! Well actually no.
Stress is nothing new to me these days and in all honesty there was nothing
really riding on this exam than my own pride. I guess I should look at things
more seriously than that but if I failed I failed and I was the only one to
answer to.
Either way I had spent 1 or 2 hours a day practicing kanji
and switched any of my personal reading to Japanese. I felt that might give me
a bit of a chance on the vocabulary and read sections at least. As for the
listening section? Well Kansai-ben is way more incomprehensible than standard
Japanese and I’m even getting the hang of old man Japanese these days so I was
confident with my listening comprehension.
On July 7th (yup a Sunday) the big day finally
arrived and I made the arduous journey to Kwansei University, Nishinomia campus
where I would be sitting the exam. This meant about 3 hours of travelling by
train and bus with a large number of transfers. Still I guess all the hustle
and bustle distracted me from any potential exam nerves, though I’ve always
been a bit zen just before exams, since there is not much you can do on the day
anyway.
The University itself is one of the oldest, and richest,
private universities in the area and all that money really shows. The campus is
really impressive with pristine, neatly mown lawns and well refurbished beige
bricked buildings I almost felt like I’d wandered into an Ivy league
university.
As I arrived I started to feel the buzz of nervous tension
from the other examinees waiting to enter the halls. I was like being in the
final year of university all over again. I think it is fair to say that the
vast majority of examinees were from south east asia and many groups of friends
were huddled together chattering in their own languages. It’s times like this
that it really hit’s home just how small a minority native English speakers
really are in Japan. The weirdest part for me was observing friends of
different nationalities talking in together in Japanese. This is of course
perfectly natural but it still took me by surprise. I guess this is what it is
like for none native English speakers in most corners of the globe.
The test itself wasn’t all that long, though with all the
formalities it seemed to take forever. I won’t bore you with a blow by blow but
I do think it went ok and my results should come in soon. To wrap up here are
some of the more interesting (to me) observations I made on the day;
1.
It seems like it is natural instinct for a lot
of SE Asians to give and receive items with two hands, though this observation
maybe biased as we were in Japan and that is customarily how things are done
here.
2.
Seating order can be confusing. The seating
order in the halls went from right to left and in columns with the lowest
number at the top. Felt really weird to me but hey different strokes.
3.
Japanese inefficiency is everywhere. I seriously
felt the urge to get up and show the instructors how to collect in all the
papers in at least a third of the time. It was nonsensically slow. Maybe I’ve
just been coding too long.
4.
Natto spaghetti is not and never will be
delicious and I refuse to believe and Italian would ever honestly enjoy it.
Reading paper you are a pack of lies.
5.
A sign with a little chibi man telling people to
shush is about as effective a deterrent as a feather duster for warding away
lions.
6.
A short break should be longer than 10 seconds
and not contain ridiculous music.
That’s it for now.
Mata neee.
