Autumn and JLPT4

The autumn has finally really arrived, the leaves are turning red and yellow and the weather is colder, though it’s still warmer than it usually is during fall. I’m a big fan of all the foliage colours and it always makes me just want to knit something warm and paint a lot with bright colours. Too bad I haven’t really had time for those things. For few weeks now I have been running from job interview to another and actually I managed to get contract with two companies which hire extra workers for grocery stores, cafes and bars. There is no such a thing as a minimum hours in a week, so it’s really mostly about luck and how volunteer you’re jumping to the metro and getting to work whenever someone calls you. I have done this couple of years ago and it’s easy as long as you don’t do any other plans you need to keep. And the variety of places you will work in is actually quite fun.

Japan… I don’t know how many times I have already written that it is getting closer. An obvious fact, but I guess writing it up makes it easier to wait ^^. I have been a huge fan of this blog called GaijinPot, very nice articles about different phenomena in Japan. One of the most interesting ones was this post about the “UchiSoto” culture in Japan. Reading that made me see the Japan little bit differently and also I had a great wake up experience about our last visit in Japan. It made me really see the natural reason behind the help we received and why we were treated like we were. I recommend reading that, it’s not that long.

From the subject to another, I’m actually really proud of myself for completing the first Kanji Book. I’m still going to do the reviews about the chapters (always after every 4-5 chapters I think) to check that I actually am still able to do even the kanji from the beginning. The next book will be little bit different to study because with this Book 1, I decided right from the beginning that I would study every kanji from that book no matter if those ones weren’t on the kanji list for JLPT4. In this point I guess I have to point out that for JLPT tests there doesn’t exist a real kanji list anymore. After the test was renewed few years ago they dropped all the official material out, leaving the situation hanging on those very flowing sentences about one’s skills (see them in on this blogs page “Project data”).

But because many people feel that it’s really hard to study without any base, most of the people still use these old kanji lists which you can still find from the web. Here is the list where I have based my estimation about JLPT4 kanji (the list is cumulative with N5 kanji too). One reason why I decided to read the whole Kanji Book 1 including all the 251 kanji (even when I circle out the lists kanji there comes only approximately 170 kanji from the book 1 and rest from the book 2) was that the list is old and not valid, though it still gives you a quite a good glimpse what is to be expected.

Cheers

Acha

Roppongi (Tokyo), 2012

Öland (Sweden), 2010