The JLPT

Right, OK, sorry, I know it's not video games but on Sunday I took the JLPT exam and it was distracting me from proper gaming so much that I thought I'd at least talk about what went down on the day.

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.

Probably failed
Will try again in December
Video games in the next post

The Foreign Gamer Problem: Not So Bad After All

So as I've told you like a million and one times I'm a guy who lives in Japan, I'm sure you know this pretty well by now.

So today, I had a day off work and I decided to have a bit of a stint in my local game centre.  In that game centre there is a game I have mentioned on this blog before known as Code of Joker.  I did a post on code of Joker outlining what that games all about here

http://identitygaming.blogspot.jp/2013/10/return-to-game-centre-code-of-joker.html

To sum it up though its a card game that's sort of like smashing Pokemon, Magic The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh all together at the same time.  Now my record on this game is bad, I think out of the 21 games that I've played I've won 9 of them (it might be 6 but I'm pretty sure it's 9), which is a less than satisfactory performance to say the least.

Now don't get what I'm about to say twisted, I'm not making excuses, I do genuinely suck at Code of Joker but my suckage isn't the only factor at play here.  You see, everything in Code of Joker is obviously written in Japanese and as a foreigner it obviously takes me a little more time to understand what each card in the game does.  However, when you consider how the game handles play time and credits it creates problems for someone like me.

Inserting money into the game doesn't give you a credit equal to one go, it gives you something called GP which is equal to time on the menu.  Playing one match of the game costs a set amount of GP and after each game you are given about 45 seconds of "Service Time" to make any quick changes to your deck before you start the next match.  If the 45 seconds of service time run out, then it starts ticking down from your GP.

So how does this create problems for me?  Well because I'm sort of bad at reading Kanji it's basically impossible for me to create and effective deck for myself unless I pump the machine full of money and take my time working out what each card does.  This isn't a fault of the game, it's all my fault for being terrible at Kanji.  This has become a factor in a number of my losses at the game where I think a card does one thing, and then it doesn't and the mechanic works slightly differently to how I thought I read it and this causes everything to go wrong mid duel.  I'm then left to lick my wounds and scour my dictionary to re-translate what the fuck was written on the screen.

But it's not all doom and gloom!

Obviously I don't want to lose and I do really enjoy playing Code of Joker so I do want to get better at the game and what's the one way I can do that?  Practice my Japanese more!

So by sucking at the game I'm indirectly being forced to improve my language ability in order to increase my win rate.  As someone who is currently studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, this is no bad thing.  So even though my performance at this game is laughably bad there is something positive to be gleaned from the situation at the very least.

Basically what I'm trying to say with this post is that if you're a foreigner in Japan and you enjoy going to the arcade, expect to lose...A LOT.  But don't get all sad and discouraged and use it to motivate yourself for some language study.  Doesn't matter if you've been studying it for 5 years like me or you're a beginner; if not wanting to suck at games is the kick in the ass you need to learn something new, then get to it.