Almost 100,000 foreigners swarmed out of small train stations and herded toward college campuses all over Japan Sunday morning for the JLPT, a standardized Japanese test given twice a year. I joined in, for old times' sake. I passed it back in the Kyushu days and decided to give it another go. To see how the old brain is holding up. To make myself buckle down and study a little.
The people settling into their assigned seats in the benches throughout the lecture hall where I took it looked more or less representative of the ethnic breakdown of the non-Japanese in the city: some Russian women, Indian men, assorted North Americans, Brits, and Aussies, and lots and lots of Koreans and Chinese. It used to be necessary to pass it to enroll in a Japanese university as an exchange student. I think that's not true any more, but there were many college-age kids, girls dressed up in fake leather jackets and tights and guys slouched over in black and white camouflage and striped hoodies. A businessy French couple chatted before it started, and a grandfatherly white guy polished his wire rimmed glasses. Some people crammed from kanji workbooks and some slept. A few looked hungover. Most looked nervous.
The Korean girl next to me was a fidgeter. She rolled her three sharpened pencils on the desk. She held up the answer sheet and growled at it when the proctor handed it to her. She chomped on the powder blue strap of her watch during the test. After she burned through the kanji section, she hummed a little as she drew and erased cartoons on the front of the question booklet until time was called. When the first section was over, she climbed under the desk.
Her test ID said she was born in May of 2000, but I don't believe she was a day over six. Her mom came in and collected her after each section. They both looked kind of resigned. It was no place for a kid, especially the 70-minute reading comprehension section, which was about things like supply and demand, job satisfaction questionnaires, and dating in Roppongi. I felt a little bit bad for her when I glanced over halfway through and saw her swinging her legs and blowing quiet raspberries at the pages. Just a little bit, though. She did dust me on the other sections.
5 comments:
So which level did you try?
I wrote it in Hong Kong, and there was at least 1500 Hong Kong university-age kids writing the four levels.. in my class (Level 2) I counted 120 people. 70% were local Hong Kong girls , 20% were geeky boys, and 9% were middle-aged people looking like they should be cooking for their family at home.
In the entire exam hall, I could not find another English-speaking person though.. so the entire exam was presented in Cantonese (which I don't understand by the way) and at one stage the supervisor came to me and asked in native Japanese for my ID and exam voucher. Thank goodness I could understand him. haha.
So how do you feel about your exam in the end? Is it more difficult? This was the last time we could write 4 levels, in June it will only be level 1 and 2, and in December it's all 5 levels :P
when do you get the results and what exactly can you use this for?
so, people take this test to prove they can comprehend Japanese? this would be like someone from another country taking the SATs, so they could get into college? or just to participate in conversations about their score :)
eyes front young lady!
ack. I keep doing that.
I did level 2. I felt like it went okay, but found a lot of stuff after that I definitely got wrong.
What can I use it for? Hrm, one could use it to apply to a Japanese university or maybe for a job. I was mostly using it as a way to make myself study.
Results should come in mid-Feb. Because scantron sheets take two and a half months to correct.
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