For anyone who may not be aware, the JLPT is a Japanese Language exam that happens twice a year and it's designed to test a persons Japanese proficiency (no shit, huh?). The test comes in 5 levels with N5 being designed for people who don't speak Japanese and watched a few episodes of Naruto and N1 being designed for people who know WAYYYYY more Japanese than would ever be required for anything ever.
I did N2 and that shit kicked my ass so hard that it's not even funny. The test is split into a few sections of reading, grammar, vocabulary, Kanji and listening. What this really translates to is that the test is split into a few sections of Kanji, Kanji, Kanji, Kanji and listening. If you can't read the Kanji in this test then you are just fucked and considering that Kanji is my weakest point when it comes to my knowledge of Japanese, a swift ass kicking from the JLPT was pretty inevitable.
The test itself is fine though, I'm just a huge dumb ass, but there is a lot of bullshit involved. For example, they tape a pink piece of paper over the fucking clock in the room for some stupid reason that I can't figure out. Someone told me that it's to stop people cheating but that's a load of stupid bollocks and you know it is. They also don't tell you anything about the remaining time of the exam which is another thing I can't work out. Every single exam I've taken in my LIFE will give an indication when time is short because people understand that in the heat of the moment maybe you don't remember to look up at the clock or take a peek at your watch. BUT NOT IN JLPT! No of course not! They just tell you out of the blue that times up and if you didn't finish in time then fuck you.
Also they make all these rules like don't read the exam book before it starts or don't leave the room at any point or else you'll fail but in my classroom there were a handful of people flicking through the fucking book and at multiple points in the exam people left and came back. What's the fucking point of having all these goddamn rules if you're not going to enforce them!
Also a few months ago I bought a textbook to help study the JLPT and I quickly discovered that the studying I did from that book was......absolutely fucking useless. I already knew all the goddamn grammar, I studied this shit at university for my fucking degree! What I was after is something to help me study Kanji but of course the only real way to learn Kanji is to be exposed to it a bunch and I don't need to drop money on a book for that when I LIVE IN THE FUCKING COUNTRY! What a rip-off
I found that reading and translating The Silent Hill Play Novel was FAR more useful than any of these fucking textbooks.
Will try again in December
Video games in the next post
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