７月５日（日：Test Day!)

Today was the day of the 日本語能力試験 (nihongo nouryoku shiken, Japanese Language Proficiency Test or JLPT for short)!

Dave and I met at the bus stop near my house and mutually looked over some kanji on the bus and train rides to out test site.

I'm going to explain a few fun things about public transportation. First off, as is well-known, Japanese public transportation is amazing.

1. Buses
Buses almost always run right on-time or even slightly early. If you aren't a couple minutes early for your bus, you might miss it completely! It follows the Japanese convention of extreme punctuality. On regular buses there are buttons you push to indicate you want to get off at the next stop. Just the other day a toddler on the bus wanted to push the button because it makes a "pin-pon" sound. Her mom and her mom's friend were telling her "Not yet, not yet. After this next stop." It was adorable.
There are also night buses. You can catch one from the more major train stations, and they are really useful for traveling cheaply. The seats are a bit small and leg room is not abundant. If you want to save money, though, the night bus will get you from A to B overnight. If you can sleep on the bus, you don't have to waste any of your adventuring time on sleep. Plus all night buses have a luggage compartment so you don't need to juggle all of your luggage.

 picture: rather blurry picture of a "stop at the next stop" button lit up

2. 電車 (densha, trains) are simply the best
Trains travel right on-time, generally. There are all sorts of deals and passes you can get depending on your status. Japanese students and employees can get commuter passes for one specific route they will take always from home to school, or home to work. There are also cards such as ICOCA (West Japan) and SUICA (East Japan) that you can recharge and touch at the ticket gate, which are more convenient than buying a new paper ticket each time. I'm using an ICOCA card right now.
There are local trains, sub-express trains, and express trains that will take you to different stations. The express trains go faster because they only stop at the more major stations on their route. If you don't check the maps in the stations you may get on a train that goes right past your stop.
There are 優先席 (yuusenseki, priority seats) in most train cars close to the doors, meant for use by expecting mothers, people with injuries, or the elderly. The idea behind them is that anyone can use them, but that you should give them up if you see someone it is intended for get on the train. There is debate about these seats though, because most people think that you should give up any seat on the train is someone who needs it more comes on. I think it's nice that that provision is always available, though.
Also, due to societal problems with 痴漢 (chikan, molesters) on the trains, some lines have installed 女性専用車両 (jyosei senyousharyo) women-only cars that operate during certain hours of the day when trains are crowded or late and night when there might be more drunken misbehavior.

picture: the ground indicator for a waiting place to board a women-only car

3. 新幹線 (shinkansen, bullet trains)
Bullet trains are a bit expensive compared to night buses but VERY quick! They're just fantastic and very comfortable to ride. The seats are wide, leg room is spacious, and you can even swivel your row so the people sitting on the aisle get a great view of the window. They have lavatories that are handicap-accessible and vending machines. These things are the bomb.

Culture note: Punctuality is important in Japan. Americans are more lax. If you are 5 minutes late to an appointment an American is unlikely to care. In Japan, on the other hand, if you aren't 5 minutes early, you're pretty much late. Of course it depends if you are going to a business meeting or just seeing a friend, but the sense of time and punctuality is different.

Anyway, Dave and I rode a couple trains to the station about 20-minutes by foot from our test site. There was a flood of other foreigners that got off at our stop with us. Most appeared to be Korean, although I noticed a number of Chinese and Filipinos as well. There were less Caucasians than I expected, so even in the flood of foreigners walking to the test site I felt like I 目立った (medatta, stood out).

Culture note: In Japanese society standing out is generally kind of a bad thing, because it is group-oriented rather than individualistic. Most Japanese strive to be fairly similar to other Japanese people in style and behavior. So, the verb 目立つ (medatsu, to stand out) has a negative connotation. It seems opposite from the US, where from a young age we are told to appreciate what makes us different from others.

picture: A pizza sandwich Dave bought as a snack at the convenience store Family Mart, I think it's kind of funny. Do you see the tape that says "Family Mart" on the front? Japanese stores will put this tape on an item you buy if you don't want a bag to show you purchased the item.

Dave and I got to the test site in plenty of time. We were both taking the ２級 (2 kyuu, level N2) test. There are 5 JLPT levels, N5 being the easiest and N1 being the most difficult. The test runs about 3 hours and 45 minutes, including a break between the 言語知識 (gengo chishiki, language knowledge) and 聴解 (choukai, listening comprehension) sections. Oddly enough the test does not have a 面接 (mensetsu, interview) or speaking test. Regardless, the test was really difficult. I don't think I passed it, but I did my best, and I will know my result in late August or early September. Then I will have to opportunity to take it again in December (in the USA, thankfully).

Once the test was over Dave and I both avoided standing in a long, foreign line at the station to buy tickets, thanks to our ICOCA cards, yay!

 picture: ICOCA card, look how cute it is with its little platypus mascot!

My friend Yumi's boyfriend Jake was throwing her a surprise birthday party at an 居酒屋 (izakaya, Japanese-style bar) in Kyobashi and was kind enough to invite me. I got to the station very early but had so much trouble finding the izakaya that I asked four people and spent over an hour searching before I found it. Thankfully, I got there early enough to surprise Yumi and pop streamers with her other friends when she arrived! It was great to see her again, and her friends were kind enough to engage me in conversation, both in Japanese and in English.

picture: Yumi with her cakes! She had so many friends there that one cake wasn't enough!

Culture note: One difficult point for being a Japanese-learning foreigner in Japan is that many Japanese learn English in school from a young age, and see your presence as a chance to practice English. It depends on the crowd, but it can be hard to make a good impression if you are really stubborn about speaking only Japanese. The balance can be a difficult one to strike. I usually try to be inviting about others speaking English to me, but then refuse to speak English back, or just speak English a little then switch to Japanese after a little while. I try to make it clear that I want to learn Japanese and practice constantly, but show a willingness to help others with their English in return for their help. So far, that approach seems to work alright, although I selfishly want to not speak English at all. There are also times when people speak full-speed Japanese with some dropped sounds and if I want clarification they immediately think I don't understand their words, and switch to English. So any weakness in listening comprehension can turn into a real handicap.

Travel tips:
10. If you travel you are going to get lost sometimes, so never be embarrassed to ask for directions or get some help. Just be considerate of those helping you and make sure you aren't making them late for an appointment! Japanese people might not be forthcoming that you are inconveniencing them, so you should ask to be sure.

(All names used in this blog are pseudonyms.)

７月４日（土）

Today was a humbling day. It's always good when you're really working on a skill and people are being encouraging to have one day where you're just thrown in the deep end and given a real hard time. It puts things in perspective. The day before my test may not have been the most confidence-inspiring time for this to happen, but I still think it was a good experience.

I met an old friend Hideki at Fuse Station in Higashi-Osaka and he immediately began speaking to me in Japanese the way he would speak to a native Kansai person: very quickly and thick in 関西弁 (kansai-ben, Kansai dialect). Since I studied for a year in the Kansai region, normally the dialect isn't much of a problem for me, but the speed was definitely hard for me to keep up with. Plus, he has a very masculine way of talking, while I have an easier time understanding feminine speech.

There's a lot I might have to explain about what I just said, so bear with me:

1. Kansai-ben
Kansai-ben has sound and word differences from 標準語 (hyoujyungo, standard language). For a sound change example, 会う (au, to meet) sounds more like おう (ou) in Kansai. The あ (ah) sound can be more like お (oh). Endings and expressions can also be different. A well-known difference is the expression そうだ (souda, that's right) actually turns into せいやねん (seiyanen) in Kansai. At the end of a comment in standard language, informally, people will say だよ (dayo) or だね (dane). If you put that in Kansai people will say やで (yade) instead. An example of a word difference is in standard language 自転車 (jitensha) is the word for bicycle, but a lot of Kansai people call bicycles チャリ (chari).

2. Male language vs. female language
I have met Americans with the perception that Japanese is a sexist language. This may indeed be true to some extent, but not always in the way people think. Usually people think words have gender like in some Romance languages such as Spanish and French. In Japanese, words don't have gender, but there are words that only men use, and words only women use. There are also conventions and sound differences in speaking depending on the gender of the person talking.
Word differences can be found in the word for "I." Now the word also varies on level of formality, age of the speaker, and sometimes dialect, but an example could be 僕 (boku, younger male word for "I") and あたし (atashi, younger female word for "I"). The only time you'll hear a woman say "boku" is when she is singing a song. Even some songs written with a female singer in mind will use the word "boku" for "I."
One convention is that the honorific お (o) or ご (go) is more commonly used in female speech. Even when speaking less formally, women are more likely to say お酒 (osake) or お寿司 (osushi) while their male peers will simply say 酒 (sake) or 寿司 (sushi). Women are also likely to speak more formally in general. In my thinking it's a bit sexist, but it is a convention that has remained in the language as it developed through different times when the culture itself was more sexist than it is currently, so I can understand.

That was a bit of a detour, but hopefully an interesting one. Anyway, I had trouble understanding Hideki, and he spent a lot of the time explaining new vocabulary or nuances to me while we were hanging out. Fortunately he was patient and helped me a lot. He seemed sort of surprised by how much trouble I was having, and seriously underestimated the number of years I've spent learning Japanese. That's just life, though. If you're a foreign-language learner you understand: some days your brain works just fine in the other language, other days you feel like you're just mechanically and shoddily translating each thing you want to say in your head.

After walking a while in the rain we decided to sing カラオケ (karaoke) for a couple of hours, a mix of Japanese and English songs. When you go to a karaoke joint in Japan, they give you a private box and you get unlimited soft drink and coffee bar. you can also order alcohol but it gets a bit expensive. It's a lot different from karaoke in the US because you are in a room alone with your friends, and it's usually seen as a stress-reducing activity. In the US you're usually in front of people you don't know, alone, and no one wants to hear you if you're not fairly decent. Fortunately in Japan, it usually doesn't matter if you're a good singer or not, it is just an activity for socializing. You can adjust the volume of your mic and the background music, so if you're really embarrassed you can try to hide your voice. People take turns choosing songs but if other people know the song someone picked they will sing it all together, not just individually. It's a lot of fun.

Maybe it wasn't the best tribute to America, but I sang Surfin' USA by the Beach Boys because it was 独立年日 (dokuritsu nenbi, Independence Day). Masao and Hideki both told me おめでとう (omedetou, congratulations) since it was Independence Day, which I thought was kind of funny.

I came home in the early evening feeling pretty panicked about my test because I'd just had my ass handed back to me in Japanese. All I could do was try to be calm, study a little, and sleep sufficiently.

Travel tips:
8. Scary and discouraging days happen, sometimes at the worst possible time, but you just have to roll with the punches. Don't let failure take your motivation, and don't let shame keep you from trying. Maybe you just had an off day, said something really stupid, or acted in a way inappropriate to the culture and unknowingly offended someone you care about. I've done all of these things, multiple times. It's the hazard of trying to fit in with a culture you didn't grow up in. You're going to fall flat on your face sometimes, but you have to try to forgive yourself and keep your confidence and motivation up in any way you can. Don't avoid putting yourself in scary situations, because if you avoid making mistakes you won't learn and grow. We're all human and we all mess up.
9. Do karaoke in Japan. It's super fun!

(All names used in this blog are pseudonyms.)