week 27

Lots of excitement this week with a big birthday and a big test.

Although I celebrated my birthday with my girlfriend last Saturday, I had another party on Tuesday (my actual birthday) with all my friends. The fun started at the local watering-hole. A good time was had by all. Around midnight some of the party had to catch the last train and those remaining decided that it was about time for karaoke. Karaoke lasted until 5:30am when the karaoke place closed. The "evening" was capped off with a delicious breakfast at McDonalds.

After a few hours of sleep the rest of Wednesday (and the rest of my free time for the week) was spent in a run-up review for the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam wich I took yesterday. I had only a vague idea of what the test would look like going in and was happily surprised that, although the time given for each section wasn't that long, there also weren't that many questions in each section. The three sections covered Vocabulary (30 minutes for 35 questions) Grammar/Reading (70 minutes for 39 questions) and Listening (40 minutes for 27 questions). I was also happy to learn that I hadn't forgotten all my standardized test taking skills from my school days. It turns out that some of my friends were also taking this test so we all went out and celebrated our perceived success afterwords. ("Perceived" in that a 52% is considered passing... but we won't get results until September.)