The above is a fairly excellent depiction of how I've been spending almost all of my time outside of work these past...50 days: studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). You can see I have my pens and paper all ready to go, as well as a fortifying cup of coffee. Now that I'm essentially publicly broadcasting the fact that I'm taking this test I basically have to pass now or else it'll be embarrassing to the extreme. The test itself is on December 3rd so I have about two and a half weeks yet to finish up and catch up on some sleep before the four hour (gulp) exam. The test is broken down into five sections--reading, kanji, grammar, vocab, and listening--and you have to pass each section individually to pass the test as a whole, which is BRUTAL.
Oh man, I have so much more respect for people who are part-time students now because once you get done with work and get home and make dinner/eat/clean up the LAST thing you want to do is open a book and try to cram new information into your brain. I'm using a book series called "Shinsou Matome" for the N1 level of the JLPT because it's broken down into a more easily digestible 8-week study program so I don't have to think about "what I should study today" and can just process the 3-4 vocabulary points, and 30 or so new vocab words and kanji.
Each of the daily sections opens with a quick sort of "warm-up" question to answer. There's this rotating cast of little cartoon cats that hold up the answers you can choose from. But the black cat, on the far right, is almost always present and his signs always say something contrary like "I don't know!" or "I hate studying" and stuff like that. So I always find myself going "YEAH LITTLE BLACK CAT I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL!" Still, I truck along and if nothing else I've learned some new stuff over the past two months.
Recently I've been trying to wake up earlier than necessary to study BEFORE my shifts (which have been starting at either 11a or 12p the past two months which means I don't get home until 9 or even 10:30 pm most nights). I usually go to a Starbucks near my Nitori because there are a few spacious tables and, of course, free wifi. Not great for the state of my wallet, but I know that if I didn't do that I would either have to do it really late at night or would just piffle about at home and not get ANYTHING done at all. On my days off I usually find another cafe of interest to study in; today was Mojo Coffee in Harajuku.
Speaking of Harajuku, they have a really amusing PSA campaign going on right now. Those two posters (and there were more) are drawn in the style typical of shojo (young girl's) romance manga but the captions say things like, "This sort of easy password is dangerous!" (above) and "Did you know that the only person who can protect your passwords is you?" (below). Made me chuckle.
Other than that, here's a photo of a raven eating a persimmon from a tree near my house. I thought it was suitably autumnal (even though it's still in the 50s and even 60s here....hehehehehehehehehe).
Keep an eye out for another post soon about THANKSGIVING.
ALSO.
GO YALE BEAT HARVARD IN THE GAME BOOLA BOOLA. Wish I could be there, cheering,but alas I can only send good vibes instead.
Comments
Post a Comment