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The week, outside of school
Jul. 2nd, 2010 11:00 amLet's see.
Monday night after school I did karaoke practice and ate kaitensushi at Heiroku, and stopped by the bookstore for the 大学野球 magazine with the Toyo win and semester recap. Came home and worked on the entry about my Niigata trip.
Tuesday night after school I paid rent, and got some katsu from the station, and watched the Fighters-Lions game on the internet broadcast. It was in Niigata and a bunch of my friends were there. Also played some PP.
Wednesday night I went to Omiya for the Lions-Fighters game up there with Team 52. Read the Marinerds entry I just linked to if you want to see some crazy-ass stuff like us making vuvuzelas out of cardboard megaphones in the 10th inning and annoying the shit out of Seibu to the point that they lost to the Fighters. Woooooooo. But I didn't get home until well after midnight since the game went into extra innings.
Thursday night I had my final Japanese class at SJI, since it's a JLPT 2-kyuu prep course and the JLPT is this Sunday. It was a little longer than usual, 2 hours long. We took a reading/grammar/vocab test first for an hour and went over it. I bombed it. The results were basically that my grammar is mostly okay, and that I actually do just fine on the SHORT reading things -- like where they give 1-2 paragraphs and 1-2 questions, I can absorb that and the answers quickly enough. But I completely still cannot do the complex reading problems -- things like 6-7 paragraphs and 7-8 questions, or things like "here are four paragraphs, put them in order" and such.
I aced the listening though -- well, "aced" is relative but I got like 20/26 correct. And more importantly, in all but one of the 6 I got wrong, I knew why I got it wrong, that is, in most cases it was things like missing one key word such as "BEFORE you do that, sweep the floor". There was one in the non-pictures section where I knew what was going on but screwed up the vocab to describe it (ie, did they change the meeting place or the meeting room?) But overall I felt really good about it.
So my guess is that I am going to do slightly better on the 2-kyuu this time than last time but I am still not going to pass it unless I get REALLY lucky and the reading material is something I can understand well.
On the way out saying goodbye to the teacher, she explained that SJI doesn't do prep courses in the summer, so the next 1-kyuu and 2-kyuu courses start again in September, which is good for me -- I was thinking I will do the class again in the fall after I fail the 2-kyuu this time. Everyone else was talking about continuing up to the 1-kyuu class, but I'm like "...習ったことが多いんだけど、習ってないことほど多くないです！" ("I learned a lot, but there is a LOT more that I didn't learn!") I probably screwed it up but everyone laughed. I was definitely the lowest student in this class AND I joined the class several weeks into the semester so I missed some early stuff anyway. If I re-join in the fall, at least I don't have to pay registration fees again, just class fees, so it will be cheaper. I do enjoy Japanese class even if I am a pretty lousy student. I said it would be easier for me in the fall once baseball season ends and I have time for homework.
The classmates, we all pretty much dispersed at the station. There was some drama a month or so ago between the Brazilian girl and the Swiss girl and so I kind of started distancing myself in order to not get involved anyway. I thought we might go to a cafe or exchange contact info after the class but we didn't. Oh well, it's not really that big a deal.
So now I have no real plans for Friday/Saturday, ostensibly so I can stay home and study. In reality I will study some, and I think I will go play volleyball on Saturday night. Sunday night we're having a goodbye party for Jenny since she leaves Japan on Monday. Then next week will be crazy with Tokyo Dome Fighters games for me. Whee.
I came to an odd conclusion: if I liked manga/anime I might actually be better at the reading stuff, since like, Carl reads a ton of manga and a ton of light novels and stuff in Japanese, so he has a decent reading speed, but me, all I really read is baseball articles, which are largely irrelevant for these kinds of tests. So I am kinda good at kanji, and I can remember most of the grammar stuff we learned in class if I can remember example sentences with it. And since I live in Japan I have fairly decent listening. But my reading is really really weak, at least in terms of being able to read things QUICKLY. Given time and a dictionary, I can piece through just about anything. But this test, I have no time and no dictionary, so, ouch.
Monday night after school I did karaoke practice and ate kaitensushi at Heiroku, and stopped by the bookstore for the 大学野球 magazine with the Toyo win and semester recap. Came home and worked on the entry about my Niigata trip.
Tuesday night after school I paid rent, and got some katsu from the station, and watched the Fighters-Lions game on the internet broadcast. It was in Niigata and a bunch of my friends were there. Also played some PP.
Wednesday night I went to Omiya for the Lions-Fighters game up there with Team 52. Read the Marinerds entry I just linked to if you want to see some crazy-ass stuff like us making vuvuzelas out of cardboard megaphones in the 10th inning and annoying the shit out of Seibu to the point that they lost to the Fighters. Woooooooo. But I didn't get home until well after midnight since the game went into extra innings.
Thursday night I had my final Japanese class at SJI, since it's a JLPT 2-kyuu prep course and the JLPT is this Sunday. It was a little longer than usual, 2 hours long. We took a reading/grammar/vocab test first for an hour and went over it. I bombed it. The results were basically that my grammar is mostly okay, and that I actually do just fine on the SHORT reading things -- like where they give 1-2 paragraphs and 1-2 questions, I can absorb that and the answers quickly enough. But I completely still cannot do the complex reading problems -- things like 6-7 paragraphs and 7-8 questions, or things like "here are four paragraphs, put them in order" and such.
I aced the listening though -- well, "aced" is relative but I got like 20/26 correct. And more importantly, in all but one of the 6 I got wrong, I knew why I got it wrong, that is, in most cases it was things like missing one key word such as "BEFORE you do that, sweep the floor". There was one in the non-pictures section where I knew what was going on but screwed up the vocab to describe it (ie, did they change the meeting place or the meeting room?) But overall I felt really good about it.
So my guess is that I am going to do slightly better on the 2-kyuu this time than last time but I am still not going to pass it unless I get REALLY lucky and the reading material is something I can understand well.
On the way out saying goodbye to the teacher, she explained that SJI doesn't do prep courses in the summer, so the next 1-kyuu and 2-kyuu courses start again in September, which is good for me -- I was thinking I will do the class again in the fall after I fail the 2-kyuu this time. Everyone else was talking about continuing up to the 1-kyuu class, but I'm like "...習ったことが多いんだけど、習ってないことほど多くないです！" ("I learned a lot, but there is a LOT more that I didn't learn!") I probably screwed it up but everyone laughed. I was definitely the lowest student in this class AND I joined the class several weeks into the semester so I missed some early stuff anyway. If I re-join in the fall, at least I don't have to pay registration fees again, just class fees, so it will be cheaper. I do enjoy Japanese class even if I am a pretty lousy student. I said it would be easier for me in the fall once baseball season ends and I have time for homework.
The classmates, we all pretty much dispersed at the station. There was some drama a month or so ago between the Brazilian girl and the Swiss girl and so I kind of started distancing myself in order to not get involved anyway. I thought we might go to a cafe or exchange contact info after the class but we didn't. Oh well, it's not really that big a deal.
So now I have no real plans for Friday/Saturday, ostensibly so I can stay home and study. In reality I will study some, and I think I will go play volleyball on Saturday night. Sunday night we're having a goodbye party for Jenny since she leaves Japan on Monday. Then next week will be crazy with Tokyo Dome Fighters games for me. Whee.
I came to an odd conclusion: if I liked manga/anime I might actually be better at the reading stuff, since like, Carl reads a ton of manga and a ton of light novels and stuff in Japanese, so he has a decent reading speed, but me, all I really read is baseball articles, which are largely irrelevant for these kinds of tests. So I am kinda good at kanji, and I can remember most of the grammar stuff we learned in class if I can remember example sentences with it. And since I live in Japan I have fairly decent listening. But my reading is really really weak, at least in terms of being able to read things QUICKLY. Given time and a dictionary, I can piece through just about anything. But this test, I have no time and no dictionary, so, ouch.
