ryusworld

First, I am sorry for not writing about my japanese exam for a week. But I didn’t feel like it.

Somehow I didn’t wanted to update my blog. But now here I am :D

Well, it certainly was a funny and interesting experience but I don’t think I will pass the exam. For someone with a job and who learns by himself without the help of anyone it is a bit tricky to learn japanese.

But on the other side I didn’t learn enough. I could have spent more and more time on learning vocabs or kanji. I often slacked the motivation to learn in every free minute. But to be honest it doesn’t feel like I made a mistake. Because it is “just” the stage 4 I participated in.

I did this to challenge myself. And of course I am not satisifed with passing level 4 and am aiming much higher. But it takes time. And starting with the new year, if everything I planned goes smoothly I will definitely go to japanese lessons again.

But that is good for now and I will start a small summary of my day at the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in Düsseldorf.

The starting time for this event was going to be 12:00 noon. I arrived at 11 and had to wait for a whole hour. Time flew by like a snail and with each minute passed I got more and more nervous. A young lady was siting next to me in the lobby and asked me what level I was participating in. I lost a bit of my tension and had some little conversations with her. She is from Scotland, teaching english in Germany and took the 4th level like me.

I don’t know if they were in time but the opening ceremony began and the people in charge of the JLPT of today and the people who brought the test to Düsseldorf, Germany and even Europe for the first time told us abit about the history since the JLPT was celebrating its 25th birthday in Germany.

Nearly 600 people yound and old tried to pass the different levels. It is a new record.

The people split regarding their level and Test Voucher numbers into different floors and rooms. My new aquaintance wasn’t in the same group as me.

At 13:30 we started with the first part of the test. 25 minutes flew past like a hawk and we got our first 25 minutes break. One out of three done. It was ok. There were some questions which I couldn’t answer without guessing. But luckily you have a 25% chance to hit the right answer. Maybe I am lucky like Urashima Keitaro?

Second Part was the listening part. And what I forgot to mention is, that our CD Player was ok before the first part started. But after we got half of the second part of the listening questions the CD died. An emergency CD was organized for that kind of purpose. But surprise surprise no sound at all. Music CD inserted and we could hear traditional japanese music.

Really strange. 2nd part aborted and after a short break we continued with part 3.

Reading and grammar Part.

I personally think that was my best part of them all. But again there were alot of words I don’t know so I couldn’t understand the most sentences but I think I figured out most of the answers. I mean, I could read it. I couldn’t understand but I could read. That has to be semi good, right? ;)

After we finished the third part and got a little rest we continued the listening part from where we had to stop.

Luckily there were only four questions missing. Most of the time I douln’t understand what they were talking about and just catched up a few words. They were talking to fast for me. I am not trained in doing japanese conversation.

On the way back home I got all my trains while changing tracks and returned home at 18 o’clock. 8 hours after I left the house.

It was really exciting and interessting and after I set down at my specific place in the test room I wasn’t that much nervous after all. I think I will definitely redo level 4 next year if I don’t pass or maybe even attempt for level 3.

Well, I know they will be lvl E5 and E4 in the next year but that doesn’t matter.