So December is hurtling towards us.
For most people this won't really mean much beyond Christmas and a nice break, but for those of us who are studying the worlds most difficult language, December is the time of reckoning.
On Sunday December the second, the bi-annual exam will happen all over the world. All five levels are taken by hopeful combatants at dozens and dozens of venues.
In all, more than 100,000 entrants will battle against the nefarious puzzle masters. This always astounds me, who knew so many people were studying Japanese?
Around 40,000 will pass their respective exams, although this will obviously vary year by year. Sometimes you get lucky and they make it easy, but more often than not some xenophobic old fart bemoans the lack of Japanese language understanding among foreigners living in Japan, forcing the examining body to make the questions more difficult in order to prove the academic rigor of their tests - thereby completely ignoring the single biggest problem with that JLPT (there is no interview or spoken portion, nor any writing section, meaning two pillars of language understanding are completely ignored). This makes the JLPT great for receptive skills, terrible for production.
Last time I took the test I had been studying Japanese for exactly 6 months (I've lived here for ages, but was working and training all day, every day (including weekends) which left me no free time to study) and failed the N2 by 20 points. This wasn't a huge surprise given how little time I had been studying for, and the experience was both a great measure of my progress and an excellent practice run.
The test is out of 180 in total, so I wasn't too far off. Hopefully, after another 6 months study, I will pass it this time around.
I have confidence in my listening ability, and I've been working my ass off to learn as many kanji as possible, so I think I can probably break even on that front.
The final section is reading comprehension, which is my weakest area by far. If a combatant gets less than 25% (I think it's 25%, but even if it's not exactly one quarter, it's around there) on any one part of the test they automatically fail, regardless of their scores in the other sections. I am absolutely terrified that I will have a mare on the reading comprehension section and essentially invalidate the hard work I've put in elsewhere.
In preparation I'm working through two or three reading questions every night, along with the obligatory kanji practice. The reading questions I am studying can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on how difficult they are, at which point I recruit my wife to check over my answers.
This is in addition to my school homework which usually takes an hour or two a night, and my kanji review. For reference, I usually spend between 4-6 hours a day on kanji alone, so between 6 and 9 hours a day of private studying. I mention this so that in the future, regardless of whether I pass the upcoming exam or not, no one can accuse me of not trying hard enough.
(I am a tryhard, with everything.)
(Although I did take this past weekend, Monday and today off to do some writing work.)
Also, in unrelated news, I published a book. Buy the ebook here, UK, america, Japan, France, India. Buy the physical book here, UK, america, Japan, France.
I don't know why I included France, because it's ENGLISH ONLY. Do not buy it if you can't read English. Also, if you can't read English, why are you here?
It's not the best book in the world, but it is mine.