December 2004
6th
What a hoo-hah yesterday’s test proved to be. Some shocking weather had kept me from sleeping all night, and when I got to the station in the morning, it turned out that several train lines (specifically those to the exam site) has been stopped due to the gales. It’s not the best frame of mind to start the day in when you have an exam that you’ve waited for for more than a year. On finally getting to Kita-Urawa station (approx one and a half hours later – should’ve taken 20 mins) we were informed that the exam start had been delayed by an hour. The buses were crammed and I decided to walk 45 minutes to Saitama University for the test. Then it started to rain.
Organisation in the exam room was shocking. Three young girls, probably students, were adjudicating. Everything was done to the last second; they refused to start any of the exams before the new times set. Yet EVERY SINGLE TIME the head adjudicator pressed the little tape recorder to air the instructions, she found it was the wrong part of the tape, causing her to panic and rewind to find the right place. This did nothing to relax the nervous faces around me. A guy from Monoghan sitting behind me offered these pearls of wisdom:
“You’d tink de tree stooges, fer dats wat dey are, could’ve feownd de roight place an de toip whoil we were sittin in soilence fer tirty minutes, wouldn’t ya?”
So, as precious minutes were lost during all this nonsense, exam times became ephemeral. New times were put up on the chalk board, only to be dusted off and written up again, every time the adjudicators made a fresh balls-up. I started to wonder if the day would ever end.
It was a bizarre situation to find myself in. There were surprisingly few western faces around…my room seemed to be almost entirely Indonesian men, with an Indian, and Irishman and an “Igirisu” man (Igirisu-English-England-UK – that’s how the logic works here); all the countries beginning with “I”. Most of those taking the harder exams were Chinese and Koreans, the Westerners mainly sitting 3rd and 4th grades, presumably because we have the luxury of studying as a hobby rather than out of necessity.
I had approached the exam with a certain degree of confidence. Foolishly, my preparation the night before had been watching Gladiator for the umpteenth time. As for the exam, the grammar section was easy – I finished it in under half the time, and it hardly tested any of the more difficult forms that I’d been agonising over. Kanji and vocab were also ok, just a few silly mistakes. The listening however, that’s another story. I caught the jist of what they were talking about, but this was no straightforward listening test. If I understood 90% of what was going on, it was the 10% that I didn’t that was the important piece with the trick, the catch. Here’s an example:
A man and a woman are talking. Where will they hang the clock?
Man: How about over the TV?
Woman: Yeah, that’d be ok, but, then I couldn’t relax in front of the TV.
Man: How about above the Bookcase?
Woman: That’s a little too high, don’t you think?
Man: Sheesh, how about above the pot plant?
Woman: Yeah, that’d be ok, but if the tree grows up…
Man: You’re really trying my patience now. How about over there?
Woman: But the dog’ll have at it if we put it there. Ok, let’s do as you suggested earlier.
Q Where did they hang the clock?
A) Above the TV B) Above the Bookcase C) Above the plant D) Over there
Guy from Monoghan: “That dog just f***** up my answer”.
So final verdict…if the points are totalled cumulatively and a percentage worked out overall, then I should pass. If I need to pass all sections to pass overall, the listening section will probably fail me. So no celebrations yet, and I won’t know the result ‘til mid February.
13th
So it’s that time of year again, when I say a very relieved goodbye to Japan for a couple of weeks, and escape the rather weird, tacky, soulless Christmas traditions that have taken root over here. As Ricky says, it’s like they’ve taken an altogether foreign concept and shoe-horned it into the yearly cycle of festivities, choosing a veritable mishmash of symbols to accompany it. The most bizarre of these, as far as I’m concerned, is the equating of Kentucky Fried chicken with Christmas Dinner as one and the same thing! No, you didn’t read that wrong, people honestly believe that there could be nothing more festive than taking the family to the KFC of an evening for some finger likin’ bargain basement Colonel Sanders chicken wings. My advice for Japan – stick to your own holidays, we’ll stick to ours.
Sunday night I was invited, along with Taoe and Ricky, to my Principal’s house for Xmas dinner. I won’t bore you with the details, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. A thoroughly nice evening of dancing Santa toys and cosplay dogs, and almost a Christmas dinner except for the sushi, squid pizza, and, and the KFC.
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