🍎🧬📚 queenofthegods' "I passed N2 now what?" Study Log

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
101

I really feel like JLPT did a number on everyone’s interest in Japanese language xddd

nice that you’re going back to reading though C:

also, have you heard of the WaniKani-wide Japanese readathon? Since it’s your first time around, I’m not sure you’re familiar with it yet, but it might be my number one most communal experience on the forums that we have, and a lot of people (me included) are weirdly into it, so I think I’d recommend for you to look into it ^^

And congrats on level 35 now~

102

It always does. People usually have some sort of plan for after the JLPT, whether it be something they want to buy, going out to eat, or just taking a break from Japanese studies in general. Going out to dinner (or with the new time lunch) with whoever you see at the test center is another tradition among the ALTs.

I have heard of it and also participated in a read every day challenge a couple years back. It sounds like fun! That is a day when Mr. Engineer will be visiting so maybe I can rope him in too. Is it more on theme for him to read in Japanese or to read in English? XD Maybe I can power through and finish the last 60-70 pages of Prisoner of Azkaban and move on to the next book.

Thanks! I’m hoping this will be a fast level but who knows.

103

December 10th and 11th

:crocodile: 15 lessons and 289 reviews
:owl: appeased the owl
:japanese_passing_grade_button: got into graduate school
:books: started Motoring with Mohammed

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Of course I will have over 300 more reviews to do by this time tomorrow, but still progress.

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One of the little little ones at school gave me this today. They also asked me if I am married. I wanted to say “I’m a little too young to be married” but they are like 7 so to them 26 years old is ancient and definitely old enough to be married right hahaha. Also got the “is Santa real?” question so I just told them “Santa is a very fast man” :joy:

Today was Christmas class day at one of my schools and it was a blast. One of the other teachers dressed up as Santa Claus and busted into every class to wish everyone a merry Christmas and hand out presents (that were in fact just “extra homework” tickets). The first class he did this in was completely unexpected even by us teachers so it was quite the surprise. One of the older students was in on it too and presumably helped prepare all the presents (well, more like “presents” lol) for the younger kids. It’s always really cute when older kids take a hand in helping out make the Christmas magic. All classes collectively lost their shit and were so excited. Even the grumpy English teacher got a kick out of it and wanted to take a picture with Santa.

Musings about Christmas magic

Personally I find Christmas in Japan to be pretty depressing because it has the sparkle of Christmas but none of the “Christmas magic” I guess you would call it. Like yeah there is Christmas music playing and some illuminations to go to but it lacks the feeling like people singing Christmas carols or handing out candy canes or taking family pictures. Christmas in Japan is more like Valentines day so it is associated with romance, as I guess it can also be in the US considering the huge amount of Christmas romcoms that exist. It’s also considered a holiday just for kids, with only children receiving presents and people don’t give their parents presents even as adults. Nobody here understands the struggle of trying to buy a present for your dad who doesn’t need or want anything lol.

To collect evidence for my theory, I asked my boyfriend what he thinks Home Alone (the worldwide popular Christmas movie) is about. He said it is about a boy doing funny things. Sure, Kevin does do a lot of funny things, but one common theme you have to keep in mind is how hard Kevin’s mom is trying to get home for Christmas to see her son. Or that the solution to leaving one kid behind is the whole family turns around from their family vacation to see him. An easier and more realistic solution is for one parent to fly back, get him, then return to finish the vacation. If it wasn’t Christmas, that is what they would do, but it is Christmas so they do something different. The mother is also given a ride by some people because they also want her to see her son for Christmas, all the while singing Christmas songs together. These are all examples of “Christmas magic” that are perhaps overlooked by those not from Western countries. The whole point of Christmas is to be together with family and to make others smile.

While Japan in general and especially more rural places are a bit distanced from the celebration of Christmas, I think some people around me have perhaps unintentionally really got it down. The teacher changing into a Santa costume and busting into three classes to make the kids smile and laugh is a great example. He had other classes to teach, but still took the time to bring happiness to the kids. The workers at my local convenience store also dress up for Christmas, with most workers in green Santa hats and one guy in a full Santa costume. The convenience store is decorated too, like many others, but this is the only store where I see workers dressing up. The Santa suit guy will even happily respond to being called Santa-san. The city might have all the light shows and decorations, but my district has Christmas magic.

As stated previously, I dressed up as a Christmas tree. Everyone loved it and thought it was great and/or hilarious. In the end I could only find a green t-shirt not a sweater like planned so I was a little cold today, but seeing everyone smile at my silly costume makes it worth it. It’s amazing how much whimsy you can add to everyone’s day with just a t-shirt, felt, ribbon, and some thread. Also had absolutely no shame doing spins to show off the full costume and bending down and pointing to say “look at my STAR!” :joy: Acting silly is so fun.

Because I am committed to the bit, the costume stayed on all day. This also means it was on at 10am when the IDs of those who passed the entrance exam were posted on the university website. The English teacher doesn’t like it when I use my phone and will constantly interrupt me so I had to sneak into the bathroom to check my results. This means I found out I got into graduate school while standing in a squat toilet cubical dressed as a Christmas tree. Oh how absurd my life is.

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Now for the hard part of applying to scholarships and finding an apartment :face_with_peeking_eye:

104

Congrats ! :smile:

105

Honestly, best grad school acceptance story ever!

Congrats!!

106

Thanks!

Thank you! I try :joy:

107

Everyone should have to find out in this manner, amazing and congratulations!

108

December 12th/13th/14th

:crocodile: 15 lessons and 223 reviews
:owl: appeased the owl x3

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Friday while bored at work

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The horrors persist but so do I.

This weekend’s theme was Christmas shopping. I was supposed to go last week but did not get to it, so I REALLY have to get a move on. This time it is a little easier because I’ve been here so long my friends and family have specific requests now. However, considering they are my kind of people, the requests can get a little odd.

Requests so far:
1x Mountain vegetable knife
2x unique weeding tools
2x miso soup bowls
1-2x locally made knives
1x Yona of the Dawn art book
1x Kanji dictionary
Many x green tea bags

I was able to get everything except for the life of me I cannot find the Yona of the Dawn art book. I checked a local bookstore, a big bookstore, and Animate. No luck. Like this could entirely be user error but I looked around and found various art books or Yona of the Dawn manga but no combination thereof. Might need to ask my sister if there is anything else she might want because I don’t think I’ll be able to find this in the prefecture considering I already checked two manga focused bookstores in the largest city in the prefecture.

On a side note, apparently people in Japan don’t get their parents gifts for Christmas so they do not understand the pain of trying to think of a gift for your dad who doesn’t want or need anything. In my 26 Christmases on this earth the number one gift for my dad is hand made dish scrubbers made from old onion bags. He is so excited about it he is sending me pictures of the destroyed ones asking for more. Easy enough but it would be nice to give him something not chores related. Recently I saw on Instagram someone crocheting the topographical map of a mountain so I thought that would be a cool gift for my dad. Texted him to ask what his favorite mountain is and he replied with “all of them!” Thank you, father, very helpful :joy:

I also scurried around to collect some more goshuin, putting my total for the year at 95. I can only think of 1-2 more I specifically want for the year so I am debating if I push for a nice round 100 or just call it good at 97. The snow has started so it’s getting harder to get out and about so don’t have any good opportunities to go on a goshuin adventure. Only have ten more days before I fly back to the US so the decision may be made for me.

109

Acceptance season for the English speaking world is coming up soon, should start a social media trend of people getting their acceptances while wearing silly costumes or just in the most ridiculous circumstances possible.

I didn’t actually get my acceptance letter until the next day, but once again I was dressed as a Christmas tree :joy:.

110

If you’ve failed the N2 3 times already then it seems like just an inefficiency in your studies. How are you practicing your test taking? Also, I think you should at least pass level 40 in Wanikani before trying the N2. Recognize too that there are A LOT of words that are only in Hiragana (particularly Onomatopoeia) that Wanikani doesn’t teach. Also, reading speed is very important in a long test like the JLPT. I recommend using the “Speed Master” series, particularly their Grammar and Reading books.

Lastly (and most importantly), are you enjoying studying? I find that it’s very easy to study when you actually enjoy the work or the process. I LOVE doing my Wanikani reviews because I always do them with a delicious energy drink (or coffee and snack) while listening to my favorite music in my free time. I was also an English teacher with a lot of free time so I’d utilize that time studying rather than talking to co-workers or other people… unless it’s in Japanese of course!

Wish you the best!

111

If you read some of my other posts, you will see that I do practice using practice exams and also read books in Japanese for reading speed. This time I finished the N2 20 minutes early. Also, plenty of people pass the N2 having never studied using WaniKani. It’s a great tool, but not the only way to achieve N2 results.

I appreciate your feedback but the JLPT is only one piece of my Japanese studies. It doesn’t define me. My coworkers do not speak English and I was just accepted into a Japanese university with no English language program, so things are going fine for me, even with 3 or possibly even 4 fails under my belt.

112

Yeah, I think it’s a weird quirk of the nature of the Japanese learning community (particularly online) to emphasize passing a test with zero production (ie writing and speaking) over the living nature of language which is to say, use in communication. Other humans, they’re neat sometimes!

Also I share your pain in having trouble finding a dad gift. I honestly am not sure I’ve ever gotten him something he liked that wasn’t a book, and even those weren’t always a win :sob::rofl:

113

I guess the main part it’s confusing for is when some people don’t need to take a test regardless, but occasionally vastly overemphasise it over actually using the language. Outside of that for people who the test is more relevant for, I reckon it would probably be better if it wasn’t for the fact that there aren’t any decent widely available tests which actually test output and are usable for visas/jobs (BJT maybe? but not as widely available to take as JLPT outside of Japan I think). Japanese outdated testing system, jobs/visa requirements needing JLPT or equivalent, and (parts of) Japanese learning community all combining to overemphasise JLPT sometimes though.

(and this coming from someone who’s spent the last 20 months almost continuously studying for different JLPT tests in combination with using the language… it’s useful as a framework for studying to improve comprehension skills in combination with actually using Japanese, useful for jobs sometimes, and nothing more)

114

December 15th

:crocodile: 26 lessons and 343 reviews
:owl: appeased the owl
:newspaper: local newsletter
:speaker_high_volume: so many hours of Men at Arms
:books: The World for Sale

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Trying to catch up after the weekend. Unsure how successful this will turn out to be.

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For any of you who have spent a spring in Japan, you will know these things are a curse for all those who go outside.

Found out this morning that this Wednesday is the day of our meeting with the government. Honestly part of me is so excited. Not sure if they are going to ask directly but I am ready to whip out my photocopied acceptance letter and tell them not only do I not care they aren’t keeping us, I am also leaving early. I wish them well, but I am done.

Today in class the students had to translate a Japanese sentence into an English one and even I was struggling lol. Apparently 載っています can mean “written in” or “including” which blew my mind. I was trying to figure out how the word 「不可能」 could be on a dictionary :joy:.

After waiting for weeks I finally got the audiobook of Men at Arms from the library and proceeded to get through 8 of the 13 hours over the weekend. Unfortunately for me I forgot to get on the waitlist for the next book in advance so now I have to wait another MONTH to listen to it. Truly tragic. My plan for winter break is to get another library card from the neighboring county so I can double my library availability, muahaha. Now just to read the physical books I got for Christmas last year…

115

I’ve found it to be an almost strictly online phenomenon. For my in person tests, we hype each other up and also say things like “are you ready to fail the N2?” It is very common to fail over and over. Whenever a new person takes the N2 for the first time we welcome them to the struggle bus and meet their shell shock coming out of that first exam with “yep, welcome to the N2.”

For myself and many others, we use it more as a pressure to study. Some people can study without the pressure of a deadline but a lot of us really need that structure, even if it is just a test once or twice a year. Personally, I decided to take a year to study for the N2 after the N3 then took another year to study for my second attempt since I only got a 70. The second time around I got a 62. Because of this, I decided that I do truly need that pressure so I don’t slack off for half the year and am going to keep taking the N2 twice a year until I pass, no matter what my scores are.

116

December 16th

:crocodile: 15 lessons and 223 reviews
:owl: appeased the owl
:books: The World for Sale
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I actually caught up on reviews today. Glad it only took two days after skipping the weekend.

The day was pretty uneventful. Only had one class so that’s 7 hours of wearing business casual while trying to look busy. Yesterday’s activities of choice were catching up on reviews, reading The World for Sale for probably 2 hours, and two pages of the world’s most infurating Christmas puzzle book. I found it for 50% in a bookstore last year and figured the adult level puzzles would be good for the Enlish that has fallen out of my brain over the past couple years. It is truly nearly impossible though XD. Managed to finish the crossword and the maze then rage quit on the unscrambling letters and pick two anagrams to finish a sentence. Like I’m smart but I’m not WORD smart. My sister would be destroying this book but unfortunately the wordsmith knowledge did not go into my brain. She learned 3-4 languages and got three degrees in the time I learned 1+0.2 languages and got one degree (plus one minor) so she definitely has a language brain. In that time I also got full drivers licenses in two countries so I guess that’s where my extra brain power went.

Also The World for Sale is great. Head about it on Freakonomics and commodity trading is truly the modern day wild west (well, so far the book is about the 70’s-90’s, so not exactly modern). However I may not finish it in time and will have to get on the waitlist for the third time XD. That’s my fault though.

117

I don’t know which languages your sister learned…

But people don’t like to admit it, learning closely related languages is a totally different game than going from a germanic/romance language to an unrelated one with a complicated script.
I had close to no troubles learning English. But in the time I invested in japanese I could have probably learned French (had it 4 years in school) and Spanish/Italian to a pretty good degree already.

118

December 17th

:crocodile: 9 lessons and 206 reviews
:owl: appeased the owl
:pencil: 906 words
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The 9th graders made my day today. Two of them saw me walking toward their classroom, were like “oh it’s queenofthegods” then went back into the classroom, only to be shortly followed by the ENTIRE class sprinting down the hall to look at my English board. Every week I write a new one and every week one of the daily warm up questions is “what is the English board about?” and they rarely know. After many weeks of telling them that makes me sad, today the whole class made sure to go read it XD.

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I decided that a new goal of mine will be to write every day. I have the (somewhat self centered) desire to write a book about my time in Japan and reasonably speaking, this is the most free time I am ever going to have until I retire so I should REALLY get a move on with this. I’m already about 10,000 words in from earlier this year, which means I only have to do that four more times to reach a NaNoWriMo length of book. However timeline wise I am literally only one week into my time in Japan and present day queenofthegods is in year five now so there’s a lot to cover lol. Usually the first days or weeks are quite vivid and as it becomes normal life the days all blend together. After this I am essentially going to skip the whole first year because the main feeling of that time was depression so nothing very interesting happened lol. Another reason I should get a move on with this is my grandma (age 90) keeps asking me to write a book and my aunt told me that my grandma is starting to show signs of dementia. So, I want to finish this as fast as possible so my grandma can enjoy it.

Writing something your grandma can read is a good line to draw for writting a book, but life isn’t always grandma appropriate. I also know people in my life are telling Japan-interested teens about my life and would likely give them a copy of my book. That’s cool and all but how am I to write about my life that covers a full adult range of activities and emotions while still keeping it teen and grandma appropriate? Guess that is a question for a professional editor. My story will also not be all positive about Japan, there are dark sides to living here, especially as a woman, and the overall darkness of the adjustment period isn’t something I just want to gloss over. Adjusting to Japan was probably the longest and most emotionally painful thing I have ever done, and while I do want to be honest about how incredibly difficult adjusting to another country is, I don’t want to discourage people either. You can make it out the other side and it is amazing.

Today was the day of our meeting with the government about future employment. It was pretty uneventful. My one complaint is my coworkers forgot about me and didn’t turn on the heat in the room, so it was so cold :smiling_face_with_tear: (9C/48F). I did kinda predict they would forget me so I did wear my hoodie but I wish I brought my desk blanket (yes it is socially acceptable to have a desk blanket in Japan). Our meeting had someone call in as a translator and she was requested to 翻訳してください and my first thought was “it’s actually 通訳.” I feel like such an ass hahahahaha. When people started struggling I did my best to type up somewhat abbreviated translations to what both sides were saying. Of course I wasn’t catching everything but it felt really cool to be able to understand and translate in my head fast enough to be of help in a meeting.

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(this is a giant kerosene heater because that is how we heat the school)

119

It definitely is! When I went to Italy last year, I picked up the language SOOOOO fast and it was so easy to get around after even just two weeks. It is also very funny for my sister to say “no, it isn’t like that!” or complain about some kanji looking “wrong” when it comes to Japanese. She is trying to apply her previous experience to Japanese and it is just a completely different ballpark. She is legitimately good at languages so I think she will be able to learn Japanese quickly when she starts studying for real, but she will need to be humbled/educated first.

As for our languages, she learned Spanish, Latin, and Greek. I was quite literally in the same classes as her (up until mid high school) so I can say with confidence that I did not pick up languages half as fast as my sister. I started studying Japanese at 17 and it really clicked for me. Like obviously it was hard but ever since then my ability to pick up other languages has gone up a lot, such as when I visited Italy and my Duolingo studying of Chinese. Either I was just never truly interested before because my parents picked the languages OR this is a result of me being dyslexic. The mix of kanji and kana is fantastic for my dyslexic brain. I am a strong reader of my native language English, but it took me so long to learn (couldn’t read until age 9, couldn’t reliably spell anything until 12). So, other languages with their strings of letters that make no sense were not worth the effort for me. I liked Greek the best because it is entirely phonetic, but started struggling by the end of the first year.

Part of me wonders if I would have suffered less if I had chose to move to Italy instead of Japan. Already here so just going to keep struggling with my not-language brain. In the US we talk about how some people have or don’t have “language brains” but most of the world doesn’t have the luxury of just studying one language, so it is possible for even those who struggle to learn a second language.

120

MANGIARE MANGIARE

damn, you’ve made it, they found your study log, it’s like Chris Broad when his students found out he’s a YouTuber xddd

study log sounds like the great testing grounds for those kinds of things xdd
i’d be interested in reading one of your drafts though ^^

okay, no study log then xddd

well aside from the accessibility of the study log, i feel like grandmas might have gone through their own fair share of wild stuff when they were younger, so there might be a benefit from not compromising on your artistic vision xddd

the more i learn the language and the culture, the more i find to complain about the culture xdddd

…okay, i’m bought

I was wondering the other day why is it that the most popular Japan influencers are almost exclusively men or pairs of a man or a woman, but yep, wouldn’t be surprised ^^

<sends a very warm hug and hopes that things are working out around now>