For all the hundreds of people waiting for their JLPT results to arrive and coming to my blog via google searches, know that this year’s score slip has arrived yesterday in Japan. As I was expecting, I failed level 2 again for lack of studying…
JLPT 2008 score: 217/400
- Vocabulary/Kanji: 58/100
- Listening: 81/100
- Grammar/Reading: 78/200
Yep, 23 points short… I guess I’m up again for the June session…
I took the test last Sunday at Surugadai University in Hanno, way out at the feet of the mountains west of Tokyo. Usually I’m assigned to Saitama Daigaku which is 10min of taxi from my new place, but I guess this year they thought I was too close and needed to suffer a bit more than usual… So I took my 1h+ train ride in the freezing cold of this Sunday morning of December a 7:30am to meet my doom: the grammar test…
As usual these past couple of years, the whole test with solutions were out on chinese websites a mere hours after the end of the examination. People in the USA have it easy with the jetlag.
I don’t want to check the answers. I’m pretty sure I did the same thing as last year: 60~65% on kanji, 85~90% on listening and utterly failed the reading/grammar part…
See you next time archnemesis!!!
This morning, on my way to work, my train stopped one express station after mine. Some accident had happened on the line and the traffic was stopped for 2-3 hours. No way I could get to work, and once the train would start running again there’d be no bus left to bring me from the station to my office (it sucks working in a factory out in the middle of nowhere).
So I startend to head back home. Trains were out, I decided to give the bus a try: no bus connection from this station back to my home. Taxis? The line in front of the taxi stop climbed back up the stairs all the way to the ticket gates… All that’s left was to hoof it up along the tracks.
It took me 45 minutes to get back home for a 5 minutes ride of express train. On my way I passed by the place of the accident and caught some shots of the train’s broken windshield. There were 5 or 6 TV helicopters circling above.
UPDATE: Jeff, over at JapanProbe.com, fished out the news article related to this accident along with a picture of the K-car that was crushed and the throngs of salarymen walking along the tracks like I did.
I don’t know if we will see any real difference here with Democrats instead of Republicans at the helm over there. All I know is this made me laugh right after lunch.
A friend of mine who works in a cargo ship brokering firm forwarded me a market report written by another broker:
Following the American erections last week, it is expected that Mr. Obama will decrease the Japanese car import ratios starting next year.
[…]
Thankfully, most Japanese cars exported to America sport an automatic transmission as most Americans are not comfortable holding a stick, according to a poll conducted few hours after the erections.
I spent last weekend, which was a 3-day holiday with 文化の日 on monday, in 軽井沢, which could be compared to the Gstaad or Courchevel of Japan. Of course, it’s a pretty far-fetched comparison: the ski-station could barely be called a hill, but anyways that’s where all the rich CEO’s buy fabulous chalets and come chill out in the weekends playing golf, tennis and splurging on designer clothes at the gigantic outlet mall that sits next to the Shinkansen station. That’s the Japanese way…
I was invited by a friend to his company’s country house. That’s one of the perks of working for a company that makes profits, unlike me and the automotive industry.
We spent the weekend contemplating the 紅葉 (and manically taking pictures) that has started already in the mountains of Nagano prefecture. Pictures are trickling down on my flickr photostream as I get to treat them from the RAW format of my new camera through Aperture. It’s a lot tougher than what I’m used to on my Ricoh GR Digital but the result is worth the effort.
Coming back from work I found a lonely shoe left in the middle of the sidewalk in front of a pachinko outside my train station. Girls walking by would shout out 「ええっ！気持ち悪い！」
Can you see a pattern here?
My good friend Jon, who is clearly superhuman, was until 3 weeks ago working at Valeo on the desk in front of me. He is now between jobs taking a sabbatical and, since he can’t stay idle too long, has started a great journey from Saitama to Hokkaido… on a bicycle.
He will be twittering his trip all along the way via his iPhone. I’ll be following him all the way from my desk.
I’m getting reports from my friends with iPhones here in Japan, since I still haven’t gone crazy and taken one as a second phone. Some features have been completely borked by Softbank:
I hope Softbank gets its act together before I need to change phones. Sadly, even after knowing all these caveats, I still want one…
If you’re planning on buying an iPhone (it’s a little too late now since they’re already out of stock everywhere in Kanto) and you’re a foreigner, there’s a couple of things you need to be aware of before you head out to the Softbank shop:
From Softbank’s website
本人確認書類を「外国人登録証明書＋外国パスポート」にてお申込される場合、以下項目をご注意ください。
- 在留期限が90日未満の場合は回線契約ができません。
- 在留期限が申込日より15ヵ月以内の場合、割賦購入（あっせん）契約による受付はできません。（店頭一括払いのみの受付となります）
- 在留期限が申込日より15ヵ月超、27ヵ月以内の場合、割賦購入（あっせん）契約による支払回数は12回払いもしくは一括払いのみの受付となります。
- 在留期限が申込日より27ヵ月を超える場合、支払い回数に関係なく割賦購入（あっせん)が可能です。
Which translates to:
With my 3 years visa expiring in 27 months and 24 days, I might hurry my purchase plans…
Note: the maximum length visa you can have (apart from being a permanent resident) is 3 years, so you’d better work on your timing or you might have to wait a very long time to get a phone
Update: as John points out in the comments, if you have a Japanese health insurance card or driver’s licence accompanied by a utility bill to your name, then this should suffice and Softbank’s people should not ask you for anything else. That’ll help quite a bit.
So people have been lined up in front of the flagship Softbank shop in Omotesando since Monday, all reservations that were taken in the first days after announcement have been canceled and now my friend Jon tells me that he called the main Softbank shop in Kumagaya, Saitama-ken and they are having a raffle for what will probably be 5 measly units on Friday.
If you want to get an iPhone here in Japan, you’d better start tossing a lot of ５円 coins at the local shinto shrine to buff up on luck and scour the raffles every weekend arount the countryside as we all did 2 years ago during the darkest times of Wii hunting.
Note: the photo is one of mine at Meiji shrine for New Year, that’s the image that comes to mind when I think about a crowd in Japan…
Update: Jon won the lottery and got his iPhone, only problem is Softbank’s servers are on their knees and they couldn’t activate his phone. It’s that crazy…
A press release just appeared on Softbank’s website and suddenly Twitter went ablaze: the official pricing details for the iPhone have been published.
Here’s the lowdown:
Of course, these prices are without any calling minutes. I wonder if I’m going to be able to get the iPhone without any plan, activate it and use my corporate Softbank SIM card in it.
Last Saturday morning I was leaving a party at 5 A.M. in Shibuya and decided it would be nice to come back home to Shiki with the new Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin line which was opening the very day and interfaces with my usual Tobu Tojo line for an almost direct trip to and from Shibuya (I just have to hop from one side of the platform to another at Wakoushi) in a breeze.
So my girlfriend and I arrived at 5:30 after being guided by cops that were all over the station for the opening and got there to climb in the first train to arrive at Shibuya station and reversing for the journey back to Saitama.
Ruiko said:
Do not under-estimate the Japanese Otaku…
Remembering this saying by a good friend of mine, I wasn’t surprised when that first train came in Shibuya station packed full of weirdos with backpacks and cameras (the classic Otaku costume). They came out of the train clapping and cheering, taking photos of each other in front of the driving cabin and macroing on every little details of the new train and station.
After the flow ebbed, we climbed on the train and were followed by a dozen of guys who must’ve missed the very first train. Losers… One of them was recording the trip and announcements with a microphone, bobbing his head to each of the stations’ distinctive music as if to music from heaven… One of them had long pommeled hair and wore a flowery dress…
I didn’t take any photos of them as my girlfriend was afraid I would get shanked by one of the weirdos like what happened in Akihabara 2 weeks ago, but I do have some photos of the brand new piece of station in Shibuya.
I missed the Keynote because I’m sick like a dog (went rafting/canyoning this weekend in a 7ºC mountain river) and couldn’t bear to stay up until 3 A.M., but today I’m telling my boss I’m taking a day off on July 11th.
Update: link to the official Softbank press release.
