Thursday 1 December 2005

第一ポスト

(drum roll...)

Right, so I've decided to join the rest of the world by experimenting with bloging. It seemed like kind of fun, and an easy way to let people see what exactly it is I do here in The Grand Inaka of Japan.

I'm supposed to be studying for my 日本語能力試験--that's the Japanese Language Proficiency Test for those of you following along at home--but it seems that I can't be bothered at the moment. In a rather insane moment 10 months ago, after learning that I had passed the 3rd level, I decided to give the second level a shot. Mistake? Dunno yet. But I did start studying this summer when I was supposed to be in the office. Hell, for me, summer is the most enjoyable time for this job. You show up between 8.30 and 9, go home for an hour lunch (which became an hour and a half or even 2 hours sometimes), leave about 2.30 or 3... and you can do whatever you want. And for that I received a whole lot of money... :0)

But anyhoo, back to the JLPT. So the jump is pretty high between 3 and 2kyu. See here.

3rd level to 2nd level
kanji 300 to 1000 or so
vocabulary 1500 words to 6000 or so
grammar basic conver. to beginning business level

Yeppo. So I've been trying as hard as I can (as you can see I'm doing now, while I'm writing this), but I dunno... the test is on Sunday in Beppu so we'll see how it goes.