entry nº 36 // 20181204

took the JLPT on sunday. N2. kinda just went for it, there. i thought i’d take the N3 this year (there are five levels, N5 being the lowest and N1 being the highest), but the teacher of my wednesday morning volunteer japanese class was like, you should take the N2, you’d be fine. he had me try a practice test and, while there was tons of stuff i didn’t understand on there, i passed. so at that point i was all like, this feels good! why not? this was back, i dunno, four months earlier? spent the next couple months cramming jlpt prep textbooks when i wasn’t doing kanji stuff or anki or whatever else during my study time, which, mind you, is typically in the morning before breakfast. 

the test was at an IT vocational school in haruyoshi, kind of south of downtown. went there on the early side and got some food from the konbini and found a park nearby (which, as it happens, is right next to the kouminkan where we have capoeira events sometimes) to sit and kill some time at. walking there from the train i was blasting car bomb in my headphones and just loving it (as i find myself tending to do, these days, and in fact quite looking forward to, if i’m going anywhere by train). it was sunny and warm enough and all in all a beautiful day. sat there on a bench eating my bento and donut or whatever and what’s this? a cat came over to visit me. i thought to myself, it’s the test cat, coming to wish me well before my big test! in actuality, it was just looking for handouts, of course, or so i assumed, and so i gladly obliged w/ a bit of rice, w/ which the cat didn’t seem too impressed, after the first couple of bites. but either way that cat just kind of sat there on the ground next to the bench while i ate and spaced out and felt the sun, and i was just completely glad to have that cat with me for a while. 

also, wow, getting kind of ahead of myself here – jlpt is the “japanese language proficiency test.” it’s your basic reception-skills-only standardized language test, i guess you could say. grammar, reading, listening. no writing or speaking on there, thank goodness, right? i’ll tell you right off the bat that the reading was a real son of a gun, there, so watch out. luckily my time management skills were pretty on point after having done a couple practice tests, and also since i’d borrowed shoko’s watch, a watch being one of the items that you’re allowed to have on your desk while taking the test (no alarms, of course).

which, man, they’re strict in there! there’s a whole yellow card/red card system for the various infractions you can commit during the test. the one female proctor of the three in there handled the card duty. cell phone rings during the listening section? red card, FAIL, you’re done. opened your test booklet early? YELLOW CARD, two of those and you’re done. and so on. it’s funny, to be an adult in that kind of situation, with other adults on the opposing side of the punitive boundaries, especially since, in my case, the whole thing kind of has no bearing on anything one way or another, which lent it all a bit of levity by way of absurdity. 

anyway here i am getting prolix as fuck out here and i haven’t even reached like the main part of the story? oh well who gives. there’s a 45-min break in between the grammar/reading and the listening sections, which was cool because you get to go outside and clear your head and stuff, but also which really turns out to be a double-edged sword, because you’re out there enjoying some fresh air or whatever and like, why would you want to go back inside? 

after the test finished, i had to pee, of course, but there’s just like a boatload of people clogging their way out of the classrooms and down the stairwells and after a kind of hairy difficult-test-experience, frankly, i wanted to take a whizz in some peace and quiet, so i ducked into the second floor, which was totally dark cause it’s sunday and there’s not much doing at the IT college, i guess, but i found my way to the bathroom in the exit-sign-only late afternoon interior dusk and flipped the light on and peed and then as i was washing my hands an employee popped in to turn off the light somebody had left on in the men’s bathroom on the second floor, but found me there instead, and he was polite as he waited for me to leave before turning the lights out one last time for the evening.