JLPT (Japanese Language Profeciency Test)

Ok, I had that last post sitting unfinished for like a year so I finally decided to just post it.  I apologize to anyone who read it, it was very boring.

Anyhoo, as I'm sure you are all dying to know how my test went.

I spent literally every day for the past two years studying for this test and....

Well, to be honest, I don't really care.

The results aren't announced until September, and I think I passed, but to be honest, if it turns out I failed, I won't mind.

"But Tom," you say, "if you spend 2 years of your life working toward something and then fail, shouldn't you be disappointed?"

Nah.  I realized before the test that I can communicate anything I want to get across in Japanese.  Sure my Japanese is not native level, but I am confident in my ability to say anything.

Can I say a sentence like filled with tough vocabulary like "my spark-plug just kinda stutters and doesn't ignite and the left axle connecting the rear tire to the fan belt is a little bent."  I mean, not that that sentence makes sense in English and it's a terrible example, but you get the point.

I can say "my car is broken, please fix my car" but I can't go into details about specific parts of my car.

So really, what does the test mean?  If I pass, is my Japanese suddenly better?  If I fail, is it worse?  Absolutely not.  I should have had a different goal when I began my studies.  A better goal would have been "be able to communicate with people in Japanese."

And in that goal, I succeeded.

Scallops and Japanese Pride

Japanese people are a very proud bunch.  Nearly every city no matter how small, has something that they are proud of and not afraid to show it.  For Noheji, we lay claim to the best scallops in the world.

Other than the fact that you can go to the local store and buy 50 giant live scallops for about 10 dollars, this has other awesome side effects.  Every restaurant in Noheji (that isn't a chain restaurant, even though most of the chain restaurants even have them) has a wide variety of scallop flavored dishes.  From scallop pizza, to scallop ramen, everything is fresh and delicious.  Also keep in mind, it's not just the body that you Minnesotans are used to.  It is everything.  The sperm, liver, eggs, little tough outer part, all are eaten.  Except on the scallop pizza, only the meaty Minnesotan-frozen scallop style parts are used.

And it's not just food either, scallops are what Noheji is famous for, so that's what you get when you come to Noheji.  Right when you get out of our train station, you see a nice big building with a giant scallop painted on the side.  Inside you can find scallop key chains and stuffed animals and the whole bit.  If you are daring, you can treat yourself to scallop flavored ice cream and scallop flavored anko.  It's fantastic.


And this goes for all of Japan for the most part.  Anyone who has been to Tokyo train station knows that they love to show off how proud they are of Tokyo Bananas.  And they should be, because they are delicious.

Japanese cities have each a famous thing, and the people are very proud of that thing.

Those of you that are my Facebook friend, check out my albums "Noheji" and "Heather's 4th Visit" for pictures of the scallop ice cream/anko/pizza.

Sooooo close!

So first of all, somehow over the past 3 months of never updating this, I have gained a faithful reader.  There seem to be three people that check this every day, so I'm very sorry mom, pop and Heather (I'm pretty sure it's you three?) that you guys keep checking and finding nothing new.  Well that is about to change.

I have almost finally finished this stupid kanji video that I've been putting off so much.  You'd think after a year of working on something that it would be fantastic, but whatever it's finally done.  I stayed up until 2am last night putting the finishing touches on the video and so all I have to do tonight (I'm at school and can't edit here) is change one little part that will take about 10 minutes then render it and upload it then tomorrow I'll write a longer blog entry devoted just to the video. 

My next project now will be going through the like 1000 pictures that I have on my computer and writing stories about them.  That will hopefully not take me too long since I can go through a few at a time and then when I want a study break, instead of checking Facebook, I'll post a picture and write the story behind it.  I have a year's worth of adventures that I haven't been blogging about because I thought that I should be working on the kanji video instead of blogging, but what ended up happening was that I would not work on either.  So anyhoo, this is a pointless entry and all I want to do is say sorry for never updating but you'll find out the reason in about 16 hours or so.

December!

Holy cow time flies by.

So I was partially successful with my goal of completing all the pictures in November...I finished the actual work of making all the mosiacs last night at about 8pm, leaving me a solid 4 hours ahead of schedule.  But when I tried to take pictures in my apartment, I couldn't get anywhere where there wasn't a massive glare from my lights, so I think I am going to have to wait until Saturday to take some pictures since I am never home when there's sunlight during the week.

1) Finish mosaics for every Japanese person I know.
2) Take pictures of said mosiacs. (saturday)
3) Make a video of the adventure.  (before Heather comes on the 27th)

So yea, I hope you are having an excellent day.  Thank you so much for reading this.  You are fantastic.

Also, I recommend you go out to the store right now and buy some fresh Mandarin oranges, they are at the peak season right now.  Super cheap.  Super delicious.  You won't regret eating 6 of them for breakfast.

note:  Apparently my blog is on Central Standard Time, so even though this post says it was posted November 30th, I promise you that right now it is December 1st.

久し振り

According to my visitor statistics it shows two people that have checked this site every day and a third person that checks it about 5 or 6 times a week.  I commend you three for sticking with your daily checks of this blog despite me not posting for like a month.

So I apologize for the lack of updates.  I think everyone that reads this is probably my facebook friend.  But if not, here are some pictures that summarize my last 2 weeks pretty well: 


CLICK ME!

Now that she's returned home, I'll probably resume my unassuming life where I only do ten things for six months straight:

1) Sleep
2) Check facebook
3) Eat
4) Cook
5) Starcraft 2 related things
6) Study Japanese
7) Bike around town
8) Shop
9) Teach
10) gchat cool people

However, Mama is coming to visit in a month so that will surely prevent me from blogging again for about 2 months.  Big Japanese test in December, and  I haven't learned any Japanese in about a month so I need to start buckling down.

Productive day

Hi Heather, mom and papa.  Sorry I haven't been updating much.  But anyhow I just thought I'd like to remember today since it was super productive.

1) woke up at 4 for morning baseball.
2) Talked to you three
3) Went to the dentist
4) Mailed a couple more packages.
5) Picked up a package
6) Went shopping
7) Finished Minna no Nihongo I
8) Played 5 games of starcraft.
9) Watched my 150th episode of One Piece and definitely can understand it a little bit.
10) Understood a story on the news about food poisoning at a yakiniku restaurant.
11) Posted some 恐山写真 (yasorezan pictures)
12) Took out the trash.

Also, I have given up my desire to translate 10,000 sentences.  Writing out sentences was taking way too long and I don't really care too much about my writing ability.  I am now focusing on listening and reading during my study time, then whenever I feel like a break, I'll try to strike up a conversation with a coworker to practice talking.  My top 3 goals are to be fluent at reading, listening and speaking Japanese, writing comes in a distant fourth.

And also, a story about the kindness of Japanese people.  About 20 stories like this have happened to me but I never get around to writing the stories and end up forgetting so I want to make sure I remember at least a few of them.

So the cherry blossoms have started blooming so I went for a walk in Atago Park, the place in Noheji with the most cherry trees.  As soon as I enter the park I see a group of about 10 people sitting down with a grill and having a little picnic and we make eye contact and I gave out a hearty "ohayo gozaimasu!" (good morning!) and they return the greetings and then, in their adorable Japanese accents ask me to come over and join their picnic.  Of course I can't turn down this offer so I sit down and, although it's only about 11:30, it's Japan, so they are drinking.  The first question they ask me is "do you drink beer?" and I said "dijoubu" which I thought meant "no thanks" but I guess it meant something else because they instantly put a beer in my hand  and do a cheers and crack open the beer and everyone laughed and celebrated.  Now of course I couldn't just be like "no actually I don't want this" and of course it's one of the giant 500mL beers so I begin to do work struggling to finish the beer.

  Meanwhile, on the grill they have scallops cooking and they look absolutely delicious.  Turns out that the group were all fishermen and these scallops were their morning catch.  The scallops were probably the freshest I would ever eat and they just kept putting them on my plate.  After about 10 scallops and when I get about half done with my beer (an hour later) they pick it up and are like "ooooh, to-masu...more?" and I remember back that to when I said "no thanks" and that ended up in a beer, so this time I just flat out say "no no" and they are like "oh ok!  No beer? Sake then!" and they pour me this giant cup of sake.

After a good 2 hours or so, I stuffed full of amazing scallops and I thanked them and went on with my walk through the park and enjoyed the beautiful cherry blossoms.  I will surely miss the kindness and generosity of Japan.

How Studying Japanese Could Improve Other Areas of My Life

I've never been able to concentrate on the same thing as long as I've been able to concentrate on studying Japanese and I think I have stumbled across a nice concept to explain why.  I have always wanted to work hard at one thing, but I always get distracted by other things and don't devote myself fully to one goal.  When I played baseball, it was too easy to play video games in my free time instead of concentrating on baseball and hitting the weight room.  I just thought I had ADD and couldn't focus on one thing for a long time, but actually what I was doing was I was making it too easy for myself to get sidetracked.

With Japanese though, what I have unconsciously done is simply live in an environment of learning.  I don't force myself to study for 2 hours a day studying vocabulary.  What I do is watch TV and want to understand it.  I don't force myself to study kanji, but I see kanji that I don't understand and I want to understand it.  I simply live in an environment that makes learning Japanese convenient.

I have put this effort to other areas of my life too.  I have been eating pretty unhealthily since I got to Japan because I wanted to taste all the new flavors.  But instead of telling myself to eat more healthy, I simply have healthy foods in the house.  It's not that I've stopped eating chips, candy, tempura, katsudon and copious amounts of ramen, but I just have fruits and vegetables always available and I have to leave my house to eat all the fried meats and ramen.  

So basically what I'm trying to say is...don't force yourself to do something, just make it inconvenient to do a bad habit.  Instead of telling myself to study Japanese, instead I have my operating system and internet browsers in Japanese, I always have learning programs open, and there are about 30 Japanese books within arms reach of me right now.  I don't have to force myself to study, it is simply easy and convenient for me to study.  I didn't tell myself that I was going to start eating healthier, I just had fruits and vegetables within arms reach and made it convenient to eat better.

In conclusion, I know my dad is probably the only person that reads this blog and I have been trying to get him to stop drinking pop for about 10 years now (he drinks like 6 cans per day) and so papa, how about instead of telling yourself to quit drinking pop, how about just not having any pop in the house?  If you are at a restaurant and want a Pepsi, that's fine, go ahead and order a Pepsi, but make it so that it isn't so easy to access everyday at the house.  You can drink pop anywhere outside of the house, but no drinking pop inside the house.

For the one other person that reads this blog, if you've been trying to eat better, don't tell yourself to stop eating sweets, just don't have sweets in your house and have fruits and cut up vegetables at arms reach.  If you want to get in better shape, don't tell yourself to run for 20 minutes, just wear comfortable clothes and go outside.

Wait for the ending...

Lately I've had the bad habit of starting blog entries, writing a paragraph, then thinking to myself "gosh this is boring, I don't really care if I remember this random story, and people definitely won't find it very interesting or entertaining."  So that leads me to finish this blog post that I started a while back and it remains neither interesting nor entertaining.  Until the end.

So my morning started out like every other morning.  I woke up earlier than most people, but then proceeded to not make use of this extra time that I had.  Many people can get ready for the day in about a half hour or less, I usually take about a hour and a half.  And usually during that hour and a half, about the only things I do are eat/shower/brush teeth/get dressed/and browse reddit.  And in case you were wondering, no I don't know why I used slashes instead of comas right there in that previous sentence, I just started with the slashes and kept the trend going.  I thought about switching to comas after "brush teeth," but that would have just been silly.

After waking up, falling out of bed, and pulling a comb across my head.  I made my way downstairs (and by downstairs I mean my kitchen) and drank a cup (of tea).  Looking up, I noticed I wasn't very late and so therefore I had time to do my normal stuff.  I had a super delicious breakfast (like every morning) of yogurt, fruit (I forgot which fruit exactly I had, but suffice it to say it was a delicious fruit, since there really is no such thing as a not-delicious fruit in Japan, they have very good quality control with their fruit.  If it isn't ripe or has been bruised, they reject it before it hits the store shelves, so it's pretty impossible to find undelicious fruit here.) tea, and homemade granola.

As I get dressed for work, I notice a new feeling I have not had in quite some time...a slight chill ran throughout my body.  Since this was by far the hottest summer on record in Aomori, I was beginning to think that it didn't get cold here, but I was wrong (why couldn't climate change only affect winters?)  I spent my first two months sweating in my apartment and longing for air conditioning.  Now suddenly, I longed for central heating.  

The slight chill in the air caused me to reach for an article of clothing that I have not worn in a good 7-8 months, my winter jacket.  I thought nothing of it as I slipped it on, one arm at a time, not quite remembering my cool cross-armed style where I can put both arms through at the same time while flinging it high over my head like President Bartlett does in The West Wing.  Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll remember the technique.  But anyhow, the point is, I got the jacket on and headed out the door.

I didn't get to the bottom of my stairs before I realized that I had forgotten my gloves.  Darn.  My hands were pretty cold, so I put my hands into my jacket pocket...

[And it is at this point in the story where you are probably thinking to yourself, I've just wasted 4 minutes of my life reading this stupid story, I don't even like Tom, why the heck am I still reading this?  But really the reason that I'm posting this story is because in high school, there was a general agreement that any story, no matter how boring, could be saved as long as it had this ending.  So I tried to make a really boring post, in hopes of testing this hypothesis.]

...and then I found 20 bucks in my jacket pocket!