While I haven’t been particularly vocal about it on here, essentially all of 2010 thus far has been spent preparing for one big test, which fortunately I took, and passed, just a couple weeks ago. The test was to be admitted as a regular (正規) 3rd-year student (3年次編転入学試験) to the economics faculty of Ryukoku University here in Kyoto. Back in Canada I studied a lot of economics and trade theory and things of that nature. Preparation for this test essentially required a full re-study of all that economics and trade theory, in Japanese. Let me tell you, at first that was rough, but slaving away at it for long enough, I’m now at a point where not only is language not a barrier to my learning, I actually know more about finance and economics in Japanese than I do/did in English. Having studied Japanese for less than 22 months, I’m feeling pretty good with the pace of things. Admission is in September, and since I’m majoring in Finance I’m getting into that work right away starting next week.
As the title of this post indicates however, I didn’t just have one test. The day after the big puppy, I took the sub-level 2 of the Kanji Kentei (漢字検定：準2級) which, while (comparatively) enjoyable and short, did hit me with some rough 四字熟語. Anticipating the result next week. If it’s good, I’ll go for 2級 later this year. Update (2010/07/08): I did manage to pass! Onward and upward.
Finally, test mania ended today with N1 of the JLPT (日本語能力試験), taken on a muggy but pleasant day at the Yoshida Campus of Kyoto University, an area I always love visiting. The test was re-formatted starting this time, plus it was my first time trying level 1 (and second time ever taking the JLPT) so I wasn’t exactly certain what to expect. Fortunately, compared with the two examinations above, it was really quite reasonable, I felt. There were a few trickily-worded grammar problems, but the listening was fine and on the whole I feel like it went quite well. One girl had a meltdown at the end of the listening section and got the infamous 失格 red card, which was odd to say the least.
That’s it for long personal updates for a while, I promise the next update will involve some detailed examination or translation of a mundane topic!
夏の到来：府立植物園、ビール工場