Japanese Society

Oh wow you're so lucky, I've always wanted to go to Japan and I hope furthering my education would take me there some day.

I did want to do biology course as part of Japan's Global 30 programm but then I realised that I'd have very little financial support plus they don't offer genetics directly

あなたが日本にどこ 住 ん で い ますか？

You can always go there after uni, that's what I did. I studied science at uni but got a job through the JET Programme.

私は 埼玉県に住んでいます. アパートから 東京まで は４５分だけ かかりますよ!

Hey, I just signed up or some JLPT prep classes at the SOAS language centre. But I didn't find where I could sign up to actually take the exam. Does anyone who has taken it (or is planning to take it) know?

It depends on where you live.

The list is here: http://www.jlpt.jp/e/application/overseas_list.html

You need to contact one of the institutions close to you. You'll then register with them to one of their exams.

Hey, will you be taking the JLPT?

I took N4 last year. I might try N3 in the December 2013 session after my year abroad but I don't intend to take the exam this year.

Are you taking N2 or N1?

Aiming for N1 as the course I took this year was between N2 and N1 and I got a a first on the course (and a 76 in the exam! =D) I am a little worried though as I've tried some sample questions and I find them extremely hard (i.e. haven't managed to answer any correctly ><.) Hopefully Chinese will help though! (And I'm hoping to sit in on Japanese Literature classes this year!)

I heard N1 was really hard, yeah, especially on grammar so Literature classes could help I guess. Fortunately you only have to answer correctly on about half the questions to pass!

I heard N1 was really hard, yeah, especially on grammar so Literature classes could help I guess. Fortunately you only have to answer correctly on about half the questions to pass!

Actually, what percentage of the questions you have to get correct in order to pass isn't known in advance. It's determined once the test has been taken, based on the scores of all of the applicants. If the average score increases, the pass mark also increases.

Lol. Thanks guys. You're basically saying we need to be in the top 30% of all applicants taking the exam to pass. (That's the average amount of applicants who passed last time.) ><''' Well, I just printed out the vocab list for JLPT 1. I know quite a few words, but most of them I do not know. I've separated the list into 7 blocks of 25 pages, each page with about 20 words. If I can learn about one list per week, I should be able to know all the vocab in 2 months. That's 500 words of vocab a week, and my university units this year are all Chinese and Korean. I wonder how I'm ever going to manage. I might just pass it twice, in December as a practice, and in July as the real "goal." Oh my god, what am I getting myself into... Azimuth, how good were you in Japanese when you passed it? I've spent three months in Japan, but in the meantime I lived in China and my head is filled with other languages. I did take a Higher intermediate course in Japanese at SOAS last year though (and I got an overall grade of 75 so... I mustn't have been that bad) but I'm still pretty worried. @.@'''
Any tips you could give me?

こんばんは！

I was wondering if someone could help me out a bit. I'm just beginning to learn the language, and so following some advice I saw on here, I've been learning ひらがな and been doing ok with it. I guess next up I'll try to get to grips with かたかな (to put it in perspective just writing these words out is taking me an awful long time!). What I wanted to know was, when should I start trying to actually learn some vocab / grammar? Should I try and get the syllabaries down perfectly and then go, or should I be jumping in now?

I have access to げんきbut it's sort of hard to know how to proceed. As another small question, in my book, こんばんは (as I wrote at the beginning) is transcribed as 'konbanwa'. Why is it not 'konbanha', or alternatively, こんばんわ?

ありがとお ございます!

I think learning vocab/grammar is really important - but I would highly recommend mastering hiragana and katakana (and simple Kanji if you can bring yourself to it!) first, to stop yourself using romaji. It's up to you in what order you learn I suppose - I don't proclaim to know the key to linguistics - but I've found it helpful to learn grammar points, as then it is easier to incorporate vocab you can pick up quickly, as opposed to the other way around.

For your second question, the 'wa' sound in konnichiwa/konbanwa actually acts as a particle - wa as a particle is always written as は, that's just how it is. The konnichi and konban actually translate to 'this day' and 'this evening' on their own, so the particle just turns it into the greeting. Hope that helps slightly?

ありがとお ございます!

こんばんは！

I was wondering if someone could help me out a bit. I'm just beginning to learn the language, and so following some advice I saw on here, I've been learning ひらがな and been doing ok with it. I guess next up I'll try to get to grips with かたかな (to put it in perspective just writing these words out is taking me an awful long time!). What I wanted to know was, when should I start trying to actually learn some vocab / grammar? Should I try and get the syllabaries down perfectly and then go, or should I be jumping in now?

I have access to げんきbut it's sort of hard to know how to proceed. As another small question, in my book, こんばんは (as I wrote at the beginning) is transcribed as 'konbanwa'. Why is it not 'konbanha', or alternatively, こんばんわ?

ありがとお ございます!