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September 06, 2001

JLPT application

Thank god for my Japanese teacher and her impeccable sense of timing. Thursday is the deadline for applications for this year's Japanese Language Proficiency Test - a fact of which I had no clue until she telephoned this morning to "remind" me. That's the good news, anyway - I'll be taking the test in December.

The bad news, of course, is that I've spent the last hour or so filling out the frigging forms. My address, in kanji, how many times? I've lost count. Let's see...eight? four of which on the same piece of paper. Thank you very much, Association of International Education, Japan - I would point you towards their Web site but, frankly, it's shit and they're clearly bureaucratic tosspots who couldn't administer a nationwide language examination in a bakery - or something. You get my point.

Thankfully I've moved since I took the level 3 exam - my previous address involved the kanji for "bridge", which I could never remember how to write correctly. For old times' sake, there it is on the right, the bastard. Doesn't seem so bad now, but I remember it being an absolute pain to reproduce legibly at normal handwriting size.
Kita-Shinjuku (left) is actually a far less daunting proposition, though I'm sure my stroke order is complete bollocks. The three coffees and two cans of coke probably aren't helping matters either.

Possibly the most pointless part of the form is the part where you have to enter a code number for how many hours of nihongo study you've done. Ever. I've been studying on and off for four years now - was I supposed to be counting? Shit. I guessed at option 06, which is "501-600 hours"; and I hope I'm being totally inaccurate and screwing up their precious statistics.

Sigh. All this hassle for a test I'm going to fail, too. Realistically there's no way I can pass the ni-kyuu ("level 2"); even my kanji, which I normally do well on (>90% on both levels 4 and 3) aren't ready. It's more for the experience than the shiny certificate.

Though it *is* an awfully nice certificate...

Posted by chris at September 6, 2001 01:17 AM | Permalink

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