test!

wow, what a week!

Let me go back a bit, to day 3; Everyone here takes an entry exam to determine the level of Japanese you know so you can be placed in the right classes. There are four levels here at JCMU.

I got into level 3, but because of my interview was asked if I would enter level 2 instead, so that I would be able to master the foundations that I lacked, specifically the polite forms.

I've never had a Japanese class before, and learned everything from my friends in Kumamoto, so I was actually lacking a lot more that expected. The past two weeks have been a challenge, and I was told that if I can't pass the weekly test today, that I should go to level 1 classes instead.

The past 3 days, I've studied 9-11 hours each day, every waking moment essentially. I feel good about how the test went today, and so I think I'll be staying in level 2 for the semester, but have a lot of work to do.

For starters, I have about 5 chapters of old patters to learn, and I should memorize all the level 1 vocabulary as well. *thats about 500 new words for me I think* oh, can't fall behind on the new stuff either!!!

I think that things will be better now though that I'm filling in the basics that I didn't know; and a lot of these things I do know already, but don't know about it, since it is just knowledge in my head, I don't nessisaraly have patterns for using these things. I just use them, but to master the language, I must memorize then know all the rules for these patterns. Just using them isn't enough.


I'm hoping for Kyoto tomarrow, we'll see based on the weather; Typhoon tomorrow I think.