So if you’re in the same boat as me, I recommend going to the “your account” page on the Japan Foundation’s web site and logging in occasionally. The scores aren’t up yet, but they’ll show up there a couple days before they come in the mail.

Last year’s scores were posted on the last day of February, by the way.

This doesn’t apply to people who happen to be in Japan and already have their scores. Lucky buggers.

Edit:  Apparently posting this was a good idea, as scores came today!  291/400 is not as good as last year’s level 4 score, but still a passing grade.

Score:

Kanji & Vocab : 41/55

Listening: 15/23

Grammar & Reading: 37/50

These are not great scores.  They ARE passing scores, but not by much.  I don’t know how much I can do on the listening portion, but I can certainly work on the other two over the next week.

In the meantime I am faced with a conundrum.

On the one hand, I should take this opportunity to study for the JLPT.

On the other hand, after finishing Exit, I decided to give Brave Story a spin in the PSP.

Inside the first half hour of Brave Story, you meet your first companion.

mmm nekomimi

So I’d like to play Brave Story for a half hour or so.

On the other hand, if I study Japanese, then I will be better able to understand future nekomimi-inside games, even if they don’t get translated.

So really I’m faced with the concept of catgirls-in-actus vs catgirls-in-potentia.

I DID have to look up what the opposite of “in potentia” was. I’m freely admitting that I’m not that big of a geek without reference materials.

I have to give the character designer credit for realizing – leather armor: not cute. Leather armor WITH A BOWTIE and a pink skirt: cute.

Maybe I’ll crack the JLPT book open and do ONE chapter.

Also, since I haven’t been tracking this every day: “Let’s Learn Japanese” progress: 36/52.

Edit: One hour later: TWO chapters read and a self-test administered. Brave Story played: Zero. The things I do for education.

Then, I hit a word spelled in katakana, like, oh, I dunno, “ホーム”, and this of course makes perfect sense. Ho-mu. Home.

And then I hit a sentence in my JLPT study manual like “ホームにならんでいます” which means “Standing in line at… home(?)”

I’m standing in line at home? What does that mean?

And after trying to figure out if there’s a different meaning for ならんで that would possibly make this make sense, I find out that the Japanese use ホーム for the English word “home”, yes, as in “home plate” or “home base” but they ALSO use it for “train platform”

Standing in line at the train platform. That makes sense.

“ホーム” instead of “乗り場”, that doesn’t bloody make sense. I just have to remember it and it will all be good in the end. Right?

Signed up for the JLPT Level 3. It’s held December 2. That gives me a little over two months to get ready while at the same time hopefully pulling down good grades in my Literature, Statistics, and Economics courses.

I can do this.

First, the good:

JLPT Level 4 results came today. That is to say, I’d already gotten an email telling me to go check my score online, so I knew that I’d passed – but getting the official score results and the certificate in the mail still felt good.

Scores:

Writing/Vocabulary: 89/100

Listening: 71/100

Reading-Grammar: 154/200

Total: 314/400

Some less good:

This morning’s weight: 206.6. Yesterday was under 205, so I need to watch myself this weekend.

This morning’s speech class: Panic, freeze, flop. Thank gus it was only a 5 point speech, but still…