Today I had the placement test at ICU, the results of which decide which level of Japanese class I'll be put in for the term. On our timetable for the week, it was due to be from 9:00 until 12:30, which I was absolutely horrified at the thought of! But it turned out to be from 9:10 until about 11:40, with 10 minute breaks in between the sections, which I was okay with.
The first and longest part was the comprehension, where you had to decide on an appropriate response, choose a particle to fit a sentence, and all that sort of thing. The second part was reading, writing and vocabulary, and the last part was the aural, or listening. The entire test was multiple choice (quite how a writing test can be multiple choice, I don't know).
As it was a placement test, many of the questions were more difficult than I would be expected to be able to do, so I wasn't too worried when I couldn't do half of them! As it was multiple choice, it was tempting to guess some of the answers I didn't know, but that wouldn't have been a good idea as, if I had by chance got a lot of guessed ones right, I would have likely been put in a level that was too high for me and struggled. For the first two parts, I could answer a good deal of questions, which I was happy about, but the listening bit was absolutely hellish. Let's hope I did well enough in the other parts to compensate! We'll find out which classes we've been put in tomorrow.
After the test it was lunch time, and Charlie and I cycled to a nearby ramen restaurant and ate there. Then, when we were outside a konbini (convenience store), Charlie found the contents of someone's wallet, including some credit cards, their ID card, and the like. He took it to the adjacent police box, where after 15 minutes of form filling he came out and told me that he'd been offered 6,000 yen (£48) as a reward for finding it, but had refused. I bet he regrets that one!
In the afternoon we had some talks about course registration, and an introduction to the IT facilities, before I came back home and fell asleep by accident! I've done that a few times since I got to Japan. I'll just be lying on my bed, waiting for a video to load on the internet or something, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up an hour later. I guess it's these busy days where I'm experiencing a lot; they just tire me out!
Tomorrow we have some more introductory talks, before finding out which level of Japanese class we've been put in; I'm looking forward!
James
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