今回合格した！
By royhuggins | September 24, 2009
Remember how we failed the 2級 (level 2 Japanese language test)? Well we took it again in July and it was way killer the second time. They changed the format, added way more reading, and generally made it to have a greater level of suckitude. There’s no way we passed it. Except…
We did! Somehow we both managed to pass by the skin of our teeth. Our proud teacher, Sagara-sensei, even laminated our proof-of-passing cards. It’s a huge relief to have that accomplished.
So you might be wondering what this means. The Japanese Language Proficiency Exam (日本語能力試験) currently has 4 levels. The highest is level 1. You could say it’s like getting your black belt. Levels 4 and 3 are largely useless as work credentials but make wonderful study goals. Level 2 is where you start qualifying for bilingual jobs (but note that working as a translator is usually a better-than-blackbelt job). Concretely, level 2 requires about 1000 Chinese characters (kanji) and 6000 vocabulary words. We don’t know all that vocabulary but we do largely know the 1000 characters. Those 1000 comprise the vast majority of written Japanese one sees unless one is reading a book, newspaper, etc. (although I am often able to understand the main points of newspaper articles). So it’s a very functional reading level.
So Electra and I are like Japanese language red belts, getting very close to our brown belts. We are good enough to make our way around Japan easily, make Japanese friends, and even do some kinds of work that require both languages. We’re pretty stoked to be at this level since we’ve been working very hard for a long time to get here!
Topics: Japan, language, momentous | 1 Comment »
September 28th, 2009 at 5:20 am
[...] jobs (but not interpreting — that’s well above my level.) I have more details on the joint blog I share with my wife (she passed, too!) I studied for this one for a long, long time so I’m stoked to be done with [...]