Tag: Japanese

A category for anything to do with Japanese. Mainly includes stuff I originally watched in Japanese. There may or may not be English versions available.

Passed JLPT N1!

With flying colors, I might add. I got the certificate in the mail. It’s like college apps all over again: big envelope means you passed, small envelope means you didn’t. The certificate itself is pretty soft and flimsy, though. I prefer hard paper.

But I digress. The pass mark for N1 was 100/180, if I recall correctly. Pretty low standards, if you ask me. I got 150/180, which is 83%. Not bad at all. The breakdown was 57/60 for grammar, 44/60 for reading and 49/60 for listening. I should have worked on my reading skills some more, I suppose. A pass is a pass though. All that traveling up and down and going back and forth paid off.

The real question though, is “what next?” Now I have my N1 certificate, what now? I don’t have an answer for that. I didn’t take it for any practical reasons. I just wanted to have that qualification “just in case”, and just so I could say I did. For now I have no intention of going to Japan or working for a Japanese company. In any case, any company worth its salt should be more concerned about my actual ability than about any piece of paper I possess. However you never know when that may change. I doubt the certificate will ever make or break any job application or school application I write, but it could sway things in my favor a bit. And it looks good on my resume, which never hurts.

In short, I’m going to pack the certificate away somewhere safe for now. Maybe in the future I’ll have a use for it, maybe I won’t. For now, I’m just happy I have it.

Two more radio programs

This time for Japanese. I scribbled them down on my noticeboard, but I forgot to note which programs they were. Knowing myself, they’re almost certainly music programs, most likely Japanese 60s, 70s and 80s classics, because that’s what I listen to the most. Anyway, they’re both on Sankakuyama FM, Wednesdays at 8pm GMT and Fridays at 9pm GMT. I used to really like Sankakuyama FM because they had a great mix of music and talk, and because their stream was fairly low quality it could stream on my slow connection without a hitch.

Unfortunately the other day I started listening and there was this right-wing guy on spouting all this racist crap about Koreans and Russians and how they think they’re better than everyone else, and that kind of pissed me off. I know Japan’s been having trouble with Russia lately, but to cast aspersion in all Russians because of that is the height of ignorance. So yeah, I’ve been souring on them a bit lately, but I still listen when that idiot isn’t on.

Cantonese is going well, I’m up to Lesson 23 of Teach Yourself Cantonese! And I finally learned to say “computer” and “fax machine” (actually I’d already learned them elsewhere, but let’s pretend I hadn’t), but not “internet” or “e-mail”. I’ve been going at a pretty good pace, but yesterday I wasn’t up to it and skipped a day of review. Yikes, 180+ items backed up in my SRS! I’m still catching up even now.

Aqua Planet Chronicle Blue

What appears to be a series of short stories by Masaru Oishi. The cover is nice, but Aqua Planet Chronicle Blue (碧 水惑星年代記) is really boring. I made it through half of the first story about the guy who wants to bonk his older stepsister while his younger stepsister wants to bonk him before giving up. I hate that kind of story, especially when it’s told in a slow, whiny, self-conscious way. Also the pen-and-ink art style may be popular these days, but I don’t think it fit the mood this time (i.e. I don’t like it) Next!

JLPT is over!

Phew!

When I posted last time about taking the JLPT level N1, I never thought the day would actually come. I have a habit of signing up for stuff and then going “Oh crap!” as the day approaches. I didn’t start studying till pretty late in November, but I was surprised at how much I knew already and how little was “new” to me. The majority of new things I learned were rarely used kanji for common words, like 頓て for やがて. The exam itself was no big deal, I finished with time to spare. The new N1 supposedly tests more advanced skills, which is why there’s less straightforward quizzing and more reading comprehension.

The best tip I can give anyone who wants to take it is: Work on your Reading Skills. The texts aren’t hard, but there’s a lot to read and not that much time. If you keep reading, your reading speed will grow and you should be able to finish everything. Otherwise you’ll be crawling along in a helpless panic, which you really don’t want to go through. As for the listening section, the pace is actually quite slow and they speak in clear, deliberate tones. You shouldn’t have any problems with it if you’ve been watching shows in Japanese for a while.

And that was it! I’m pretty sure I’ll pass, “I had a good feeling!” I’m just glad it’s over with! One of the criticisms of the JLPT is that you study your ass off for the test, pass, and never use half the stuff you learned again. Well, I’m not going to let that happen. That’s what my SRS is for, chock full of anything I found remotely useful. I made a separate deck for the JLPT stuff, even. If I can learn new vocabulary and constructs from the exam, then whether I pass or not, it’s worth it.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s back to Cantonese! I finally figured out how to split audio files using Audacity (ah, the magic of Google!). It’s easier than I’d thought, and lots of fun too. I sit down and take a few minutes to chop up the file before adding the lesson to my SRS, and then everything goes smooooothly. I also discovered that my university has Yip’s “Intermediate Cantonese Grammar” or whatever that book is called, available as an e-book. I’ll leave that alone for now, but that’s my next step after I finish the book I’m working on. Why let free materials pass me by?

And that’s all that’s going on with me so far! I feel like a huge weight fell off my shoulders, lol!

Slowly but surely

Right now I’m in the process of entering my Teach Yourself Cantonese book dialogues into surusu. It’s slow going because I’m really not used to typing in Cantonese, but I’m already up to chapter 7 and going great. Entering the dialogues really helps me remember the vocabulary and the grammatical structure without feeling like I’m cramming unnecessarily. I think I’ll do this with any other textbook I pick up, though I really feel I should jump right into real texts once I’m done with this book. Well, we’ll see.

What I’d really like is to cut up the audio and include that as well, but I’m hopeless at making Audacity do anything I want, and too lazy to download any other audio editing software, so…yeah.

Only other thing to report is a site I found, dramacrazy.net, where I can stream Japanese/Korean/Chinese dramas, movies and anime at will. In the past I didn’t bother with such sites because my internet was a slow piece of crap, but now I’ve switched ISPs, I can play around a bit more. Following my failed experiment with Last Friends a while ago, I don’t feel like watching any J-dramas, but I love Cantonese period dramas, so I’m going to be working my way through them in a while.

Oh yeah, I signed up to writ the JLPT level N1 in December! Just for the fun of it, really. Bragging rights and all that, “all my friends have one, why can’t I?” etc etc. Unfortunately I haven’t started studying for it yet, I keep telling myself I’ll do it from November. Will I really? Hahahaha…