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JLPT
I think they aren't doing a July JLPT anywhere except Japan, so I can talk about it, right?
Though I'm not going to say THAT much.
I took mine at Mejiro University, Shinjuku Campus. It's in a kind of obscure part of Ochiai/Nakai area so they had people out with "JLPT this way ->" signs to help find it, it's about a 10-15 min walk from Seibu Nakai station. The walk both there and back I was largely listening to people talking Chinese or Korean. Very surreal. There were more white people at this test than I remember there being in December, but still largely the population there was Asians and I would seriously guess Chinese was the majority.
They changed the format this year, at least for the N2 and N1 (the old 2-kyuu and 1-kyuu; the N3 is kind of a 2.5 test and I think it was still three parts). Last year it was like 40 minutes of vocab/kanji, 45 minutes of listening, and 70 minutes of reading/grammar. This year it was 105 minutes of what they called simply "Language Knowledge", or reading, grammar, vocab, kanji, etc, etc, etc. And then the second part was 45 minutes of Listening. The worst thing about this was really that you had to sit in the classroom for two hours total for the Language Knowledge part -- that means 2 hours of not being able to eat or drink AND not being able to go to the bathroom or anything else. My throat was SO dry by the end of that from the airconditioning that I thought I would die.
One nice thing was that none of the staff were tall enough to reach the clocks in the room so I could use the clock there :) Not that it mattered -- I still didn't have time to do ONE passage, so I had to punt on 5 questions, which is a big part of why I think I failed.
Listening got totally crazy though. It used to be like -- 13 questions or so with pictures, you listen to a passage and choose a picture, and then 13 questions with a passage and 4 choices, you have to choose one. Now it's no pictures. About 13 questions involved not pictures but instead involved written answers in the book, so you had to listen for the question AND read the answers in the book AND hear the passage. Then another part was basically the old passage-and-answer-listening part. Then ANOTHER part was new -- this was taken from the Eiken as far as I can tell -- basically, they say a sentence, then say 3 possible responses or next sentences. You have to listen to the sentence, then to the answers, and choose which ones go together. It was annoying as all hell, too fast to take notes on any of it and by the time you hear choice #3 you probably forgot the original sentence anyway. A few were gimmes like "How about a cup of tea? 1. I'm busy tomorrow. 2. Yes please. 3. I drank too much last night." but a lot of them were way out there, like "I've fallen and I can't get up! 1. Call the police. 2. Where are the stairs? 3. Is the floor clean?"
(That is not real, I'm just giving you an example of, if you heard this in English, you'd be like "WTF DO I CHOOSE?")
On the other hand, aside from the WTF aspect of some of those, I actually felt relatively good about the listening. Like, I mean, I don't think there were any where I truly couldn't understand what was going on. The only times I got confused were the usual tricks they pull on you where people are discussing something and you have to be sure whether she lady says "Okay, I'll take the first one I mentioned" or "I'll take the one you just mentioned before this one", and I think I managed to pull those out okay.
It won't matter though having failed the other half.
Still, despite that I almost never did the homework for my JLPT prep class, I feel like I put in a lot more effort this time around to bother learning all of the material, and actually did learn a lot. It just wasn't enough. Or more like... I still haven't learned how to read long sentences and passages very well unless they are interesting to me.
On the other hand, I have noticed that nowadays, I can sit there and just read signs on the train, or even things like, I'll be in a kaitensushi place and see the sign going around the belt saying "While dining here, please refrain from using your cellphone or reading a magazine or newspaper, out of courtesy to the staff and other customers." And I can read the entire damn thing, as in, I actually know all of the words, not just from context. Because I am just THAT cool.
Onwards to the next test in December!
Though I'm not going to say THAT much.
I took mine at Mejiro University, Shinjuku Campus. It's in a kind of obscure part of Ochiai/Nakai area so they had people out with "JLPT this way ->" signs to help find it, it's about a 10-15 min walk from Seibu Nakai station. The walk both there and back I was largely listening to people talking Chinese or Korean. Very surreal. There were more white people at this test than I remember there being in December, but still largely the population there was Asians and I would seriously guess Chinese was the majority.
They changed the format this year, at least for the N2 and N1 (the old 2-kyuu and 1-kyuu; the N3 is kind of a 2.5 test and I think it was still three parts). Last year it was like 40 minutes of vocab/kanji, 45 minutes of listening, and 70 minutes of reading/grammar. This year it was 105 minutes of what they called simply "Language Knowledge", or reading, grammar, vocab, kanji, etc, etc, etc. And then the second part was 45 minutes of Listening. The worst thing about this was really that you had to sit in the classroom for two hours total for the Language Knowledge part -- that means 2 hours of not being able to eat or drink AND not being able to go to the bathroom or anything else. My throat was SO dry by the end of that from the airconditioning that I thought I would die.
One nice thing was that none of the staff were tall enough to reach the clocks in the room so I could use the clock there :) Not that it mattered -- I still didn't have time to do ONE passage, so I had to punt on 5 questions, which is a big part of why I think I failed.
Listening got totally crazy though. It used to be like -- 13 questions or so with pictures, you listen to a passage and choose a picture, and then 13 questions with a passage and 4 choices, you have to choose one. Now it's no pictures. About 13 questions involved not pictures but instead involved written answers in the book, so you had to listen for the question AND read the answers in the book AND hear the passage. Then another part was basically the old passage-and-answer-listening part. Then ANOTHER part was new -- this was taken from the Eiken as far as I can tell -- basically, they say a sentence, then say 3 possible responses or next sentences. You have to listen to the sentence, then to the answers, and choose which ones go together. It was annoying as all hell, too fast to take notes on any of it and by the time you hear choice #3 you probably forgot the original sentence anyway. A few were gimmes like "How about a cup of tea? 1. I'm busy tomorrow. 2. Yes please. 3. I drank too much last night." but a lot of them were way out there, like "I've fallen and I can't get up! 1. Call the police. 2. Where are the stairs? 3. Is the floor clean?"
(That is not real, I'm just giving you an example of, if you heard this in English, you'd be like "WTF DO I CHOOSE?")
On the other hand, aside from the WTF aspect of some of those, I actually felt relatively good about the listening. Like, I mean, I don't think there were any where I truly couldn't understand what was going on. The only times I got confused were the usual tricks they pull on you where people are discussing something and you have to be sure whether she lady says "Okay, I'll take the first one I mentioned" or "I'll take the one you just mentioned before this one", and I think I managed to pull those out okay.
It won't matter though having failed the other half.
Still, despite that I almost never did the homework for my JLPT prep class, I feel like I put in a lot more effort this time around to bother learning all of the material, and actually did learn a lot. It just wasn't enough. Or more like... I still haven't learned how to read long sentences and passages very well unless they are interesting to me.
On the other hand, I have noticed that nowadays, I can sit there and just read signs on the train, or even things like, I'll be in a kaitensushi place and see the sign going around the belt saying "While dining here, please refrain from using your cellphone or reading a magazine or newspaper, out of courtesy to the staff and other customers." And I can read the entire damn thing, as in, I actually know all of the words, not just from context. Because I am just THAT cool.
Onwards to the next test in December!
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The lack of breaks does stink--that's weird that they mashed the sections together like that.
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Really? Sometimes I don't know if you're joking or what.
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This is a machismo thing. You don't want to imply that they're so weak as they might collapse, so you gloss it by implying that they're merely inspecting the state of the floor. Since Japanese culture froze just after the sengoku period and everyone is always out looking for a fight, an implication of weakness might give mortal insult, causing them to become revitalizd, leap up, and smite poor foreigner you with the fantastic ninjutsu skills that all Japanese are trained in from the age of 2. At that point your only recourse would be to submit and become a eunuch and/or concubine under the protection of the shōgun in the Forbidden City, where you will live out your life serving nattō tempura to the Hindu monks during their ritual re-enactment of the emperor's famous battles through acting as pieces on a giant go board.
Edit: It's been pointed out to me that I forgot to mention the Neptunian merchants' guild inspections. They, of course, insist on eating off the floor during all business dealings, and to refuse them would result in their calling in the government debt all at once. And, of course, without the necessary funds to keep the economic water turbines running, Tokyo would fall into the bay in short order.