February 2013 – goinggaijin.com

JLPT results

I just received the results of the JLPT (Japanese language proficiency test) I took last December.
I failed.
Not spectacularly, as I passed the minimum requirement for each part the test, but I failed to gather more than 50 % of the points overall. Yes, this is disappointing, but not altogether unexpected.

First of all, with all the goings-on in Austria last fall, that required me to travel quite a bit, I was occupied with other things, so my studies had to take a back seat, unfortunately.

Second, I did not know enough vocabulary – by far not. That means, I spent too much time in trying to figure out the meaning of certain words from their context – and even without doing this, the time for the test is very limited, especially for the reading part. So there were many questions I didn’t even get to before the time ran out.

In the end, I only have myself to blame for my failure, of course, but still, I learned some valuable things:

Grammar is important, but vocabulary is paramount. I will have to bite the bullet of boredom and invest more time learning new words.
There’s not enough time for pondering, really. There’s no workaround here. Moving on to the next question is of limited use, as they become increasingly difficult. Answering by wild guess may help, but with four possible choices, selecting a random set of answers doesn’t get you very far (unless you’re much more lucky than I am).
My listening comprehension is better than I had expected. This is good! Out of the three sections, I earned the highest mark there. Or maybe it was just easier to narrow down the right answer there?

A few facts about the JLPT:

In good old Japanese tradition, the JLPT has “kyu” levels – from the lowest N5 to the highest N1.
There are three scoring sections:
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar)
Reading
Listening
(The former two are combined in levels N5 and N4).
To pass the test, you need to pass each scoring section individually (with about one third of the maximum points) and you need to have more than half of the total number of points.
I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it ensures that you know at least something about each area. On the other hand, you can have full points on two sections and still fail if you miss the minimum target by a single point in the third.
You will never be tested on how well you actually speak the language – which is quite in line with how Japanese kids learn English.
All instructions on what to do for each exercise are in Japanese. There is no translation whatsoever available. Yes, that also holds for the lowest levels of the test.
You get an exercise sheet with the questions and an answer sheet where you have to mark the correct answers. Only the latter will be graded.
Grading is done by machine in Japan, and it takes two to three months for the results (and the certificate, should you pass) to arrive.
Tests take place twice a year in Japan (July and December) and at least once a year (usually December) abroad.
Extra fun fact: After a few listening exercises, a bit of music will be played to relax a bit and rest your ears…

Want to take the test yourself? Check out the JLPT site – with all sorts of hints and tryout exercises and links to institutes where you can take the test and learning materials and…

Burdening Possessions

When moving, especially internationally, the first and most important task is to minimize the amount of possessions one has to ship.

I have tried to do this as much as possible in the last few years already, primarily by not accumulating too many new things. I am an avid reader, but have tried to get most of my material from the local library or online as e-texts or audiobooks. I have tried to “make do” and “use up” as many other things as possible, clothing for example (thank goodness I work in a very fashion unconscious profession) or household goods (how many sheets or towels do you really need? And more cookware would only lead to my doing the dishes even less frequently…;-))

So, when starting to plan my exit strategy to Japan, I thought I could move with a minimum amount of necessities, even without getting rid of too many things.

But then, of course, while you’re busy making plans, this life thing happens… Last autumn it so happened that I inherited the family home back in Austria. It is a large house with basement, attic and garage, and while my family was not prone to hoarding, the house was still full to the brim with 20+ years of accumulated clutter.

It took me many weekends and my complete Christmas vacation to deal with, well, most of it. Some things were easy: outright junk, most of the furniture, family heirlooms. The other 70 percent, however, are the difficult ones: books, kitchen ware, linens, towels, memorabilia, assorted “I don’t really want it, but I just can’t throw it away”. However, I managed to unclutter and toss and whittle those 70 percent down to 12 cubic metres.

12 cubic metres, a great part of which I still don’t need or want, but need more time to sort through and make decisions about.

12 cubic metres that have just arrived and clutter up my apartment…

Writing Japanese – Kanji

Kanji are the Chinese characters that are used in writing Japanese besides Hiragana and Katakana. As they were the first system introduced to write Japanese (and both Kana systems derived from them), Kanji are used for native Japanese words and have thus a pronunciation that is different from the Chinese original. The characters themselves were subject to change over time: The Japanese simplified them early on and even added a few more characters of there own invention; and with the simplification of the characters in mainland China starting in 1956, it is now not possible – except for the simplest characters – for Japanese to read Chinese and vice versa.

Do I really need to spell it out? Kanji are the bane of every student of Japanese…

First of all, there are lots of them. Elementary school children need to learn about 1000 kanji in their first six years of school, up to the end of high school, around 2100 must be mastered. Those are called the joyo or regular use kanji – they make up about 95 % of what is used in an average newspaper. But, there is more… Another 1000 or so kanji are used only in Japanese names, and in a high level profession, fluency starts at 4000 and more. Finally, there is the Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society, which offers a test that – at its highest level – requires the taker to know around 6000 kanji…

Second, a single character can have more than one meaning. For example, the three kanji in the image together mean Japanese language, but the first character can mean day or sun, and the second one book or basis/root. Finding out the meaning of a kanji is essentially done by context.

Third, knowing the meaning of a kanji does not help with pronunciation at all. Virtually every character has at least two readings, an on-yomi – based on the sound from the Chinese – and a kun-yomi – from the word in Japanese. Some can have up to ten different readings. In the image, the whole word is read as Ni-Hon-Go, but the first character can also be read as nichi, hi, or bi, and the kun-yomi reading for the second character is moto. Once again, you’ll have to discern from the context which reading is the correct one. There are some rules of course, but this language is riddled with exceptions, unfortunately…

Finally, you’ll need to know how to write the kanji in question. The stroke order was allegedly derived to ensure the most pleasing aesthetic look… However, this is of minor concern for the Japanese learner. With the advent of computers and mobile phones, even many Japanese have difficulties writing their kanji – although they can still recognize them, of course.

Sounds impossible? Don’t get disheartened – even Japanese don’t know all possible kanji. Some people carry little dictionaries around in case they encounter a character they don’t know. Finding this out made me feel a lot better about my feeble attempts!

In any case, I think the largest part of learning the kanji is pattern matching. Not that this is easy – I have found a kanji with 29 strokes, and many look deceivingly similar – but being a visual type myself here, I think this is the way to go. Writing them surely helps, but for the most part it’s learning by rote and repetition. A never ending story, really…

There are a number of kanji trainers online, this is my favourite:
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ik2r-myr/kanji/kanji1a.htm Enjoy!

Dwellings

I have just cancelled the lease for apartment – it will end in May.

That I am going to leave has been clear for quite a while now, but still, I procrastinated considerably on sending that email. It seems I am more afraid of this step than I’d like to admit to myself. It’s not the moving as such of course, I have moved five times in the last seven years, and while I don’t enjoy it, I got used to it and can almost consider myself an expert.

No, I think it’s the fact that I don’t know what will await me on the other side. So far, there was always at least a job waiting for me, and almost always people I knew beforehand. In all cases I have been received very friendly, and people have always tried to help me settle in as quickly as possible.

No such thing this time. It’s just me, myself and I. The friends I have in Japan may not be able to provide as much help as I may need.

Giving up already? No way. Every time I pushed through my initial fears, the outcome was well worth the pain, and I never regretted persevering. Still, that voice is nagging inside my head “You give up all your security, so what if…?” It’s not easy to make that coward stop…

Writing Japanese – Katakana

Katakana is the other kana script used in Japanese besides Hiragana. Here is a full list of all the basic characters used in Katakana:

List of Katakana — Table with Basic Katakana

There are some special combinations of Katakana to aid reading foreign words, but as there is no standardized way of transcription, I’ll omit them here.

They use the same diacritic marks as Hiragana to produce the consonants g-, z-, d-, b-, and p-, and also the way of writing syllables like kyo, myo, etc. is the same as in Hiragana.

Katakana are primarily used for

words taken from foreign languages, for example television or computer
names of foreign countries or places
names of foreigners
technical and scientific terms
words that have kanji that are difficult to read
to indicate the on-yomi pronunciation of a Kanji in a dictionary

Katakana were developed around the same time as Hiragana, some even from the same kanji. While Hiragana were used for women’s writing, Katakana were developed as a shorthand and pronunciation aid by monks who were copying Chinese Buddhist texts.

Although the Katakana are essentially all straight lines, I find them surprisingly difficult to memorize. I have the feeling that they all look the same somehow. However, studying Katakana is probably the best way of being able to read anything in Japan as they (together with the Kanji) make up the majority of the writing that can be seen on the streets and in supermarkets.