Design Festa 24 & The Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 4

My, what a busy weekend this has been. As part of my resolution some posts back, I've vowed to do as much writing as I possibly can, so on saturday, I volunteered at the Design Festa, interviewing artists, visitors and writing it all up for the website. At the time of writing, the event is still in full swing, but I have had totemo ooki sakana wo furai*.

For the past couple of months, I've been kicking myself for not going that bit further and taking level 3. Since then, I've bought the level three text book (how many kanji?) and come to the realisation that this is the first exam I've taken for ten years...maybe I could do with getting used to that situation again.

So today, myself and another couple of hundred ex-pats hot-footed it over to a temporarily vacated University building to take our test. Our besuited monitors didn't speak at all. The instructions, in very slow and soothing Japanese, possibly narrated by a kindergarten teacher, came from a stereo. Something I don't remember from my GCSE's is that the monitors had a series of cards to issue warnings to misbehavers; yellow for "watch it", red for "in the shower!"

The test was divided up into three sections - writing and vocabulary, listening, reading and grammar. I stormed the reading and vocabulary, even if I do say so myself. The listening was a bit ropey, and the grammar, uncertain...

Japanese students of English have tremendous difficulties with articles (at, on, in, to etc), and I myself struggle with their equivalent, particles.

The particle ni for example, indicates movement.

"Ie ni kaerimasu."
"Return home."

It also indicates a place of existence...

"Tokyo ni imasu."
"(I'm) in Tokyo."

...and the subject towards whom an action is directed.

"Yamada Sensei ga Gaikokujin ni Nihongo wo osheteimasu"
"Yamada teaches Japanese to foreigners."

It's fairly easy to work out how ni is used from the context of the sentence (vanquishing supernatural warriors for example), but my confusion comes with the particle "de, which is also used as a place of existence,

"Kissaten de kaimashou."
"Let's meet at the coffee shop."

Of course, now that I have my books with me, and I'm reading up for this entry, I realise that de indicates a place where action is performed, whereas ni refers only to location. Which I'm sure you all wanted to know.

So, it's done. The only thing left to do is start studying for level three. Results in February, see you then.


*Very big fish to fry.