JLPT Fail

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…

JLPT Level 2

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!!!

JLPT Results craze

The results for the 日本語能力試験, more commonly known as JLPT 2008, should be getting in everyone’s mailbox in the imminently and it shows:

big jump in stats

Visits to my blog post of receiving the results last year have been spiking in the past week.

Good news: a colleague of mine got it in the mail this morning before coming to work, so most people in Japan should have it tonight or tomorrow.

Bad news: the people at the JLPT organization are mail nazis (not delivering the papers if your name is not on your mailbox, imposing crazy processes to let them know you changed address) and since I moved just before taking the test there is a pretty good chance that I will never receive the damn results.

Surf or Study

Sunday December 2nd is for many of us in Japan the dreaded day of 日本語能力試験 – also known as JLPT or Japanese Language Proficiency Test. But this weekend is also the start of what looks like the best ski season I’ve seen since I’ve come to Japan.

Kagura ski resort or Kanji?

Trying out my new snowboard gear on 130cm of snow in Kagura or studying for the 2級. It’s a tough call…