I took the Level 4 (the lowliest level) Japanese Proficiency Test today. It's really odd to take a test after five years of glorious test-free living. I'd forgotten the way they made my brain hurt. The test itself was fine. I'm pretty sure I got the 60% necessary to pass. Yeah, 60%. It seems low to me, too, but I ain't complaining. Passing the toughest test - Level 1 - bestows the title of, and all the responsibilities that go with said title, Hella Fluent in Japanese. As such, you need 70% to pass that one.

The test itself is what you'd expect from a foreign language test, I guess: some vocabulary, some grammar, and some listening. The listening section is worth mentioning because it's so goddamn nefarious. Part 1. For each problem, you usually have four pictures to look at (or one picture containing four choices) for each problem. The well-known Japanese For The Mentally Handicapped Players troupe (alas, on CD, not live and in person) then asks a question, performs a dialog in which the appropriate picture/item is revealed, then repeats the question. The nasty bit is that the dialogs are often designed to be misleading. That is, they make mention of all the wrong options and slip the real one in there somewhere. Given my heinous listening ability, I couldn't follow an entire dialog; I could just pick out some pertinent words. So I probably bombed that section, but everything else was OK.

Now it is time to celebrate by bowling and getting somewhat drunk!

So, er, how'd you do?