Finally! No more exams! Feels good! I thought today I’d write about how each part of it went, then let you get on with your lives. So get comfortable and don’t move. Unless you’re in some sort of peril.

Japanese Exam
The exam was three hours long and consisted of three parts. The first was a translation from Japanese to English about dating for old people. Yeah, a weird topic but the idea is we’ll encounter Kanji and vocab we don’t know, and then we’re to either facilitate this in the translation or guess the meaning. In reality this doesn’t work, although I don’t think I went too off the mark. I did however at one point guess a translation as ‘Women leave their husbands, be it because their children leave home, or their husbands die’ and it was a good few seconds before I realised that’s impossible.

Part two was comprehension questions about eco-tourism and the effects of tourism on the countryside. Nothing much to say here, but next time you go to a mountain don’t pick the flora! Otherwise I’ll have to answer questions about you and it’s HARD!

The final part was writing in Japanese. This time we were asked to write about the recycling system of the UK, which as you can imagine was MIND BLOWINGLY interesting.

All in all I think the exam was pretty hard. There was quite a few things in there we’d never seen before and the grammar and Kanji we had learned were used in pretty sneaky ways. I honestly have no idea how it went, but results come out in a few weeks so we’ll find out then!

Japanese Listening & Speaking
The listening was boring so I won’t write about it. For speaking we had to tell a story (yep, I know) about a guy who won the lottery, lost his ticket then found it again. I decided to talk about how he had run up huge gambling debts and winning the lottery was the only way out. When the girl came to his house to give it back, he thanked her, but at the last minute she kept the ticket and bought a boat. The teachers loved it even though I stumbled over a few tricky grammar points. But again I think it was alright.

Japan’s Minorities
Three questions, three hours. I won’t bore you with the details, but I gave mad props to the Okinawans throughout the exam. Those guys must be feeling pretty sweet right now. (At least if they read my essay, which I admit there is little chance of them doing).

Yeah, so this was a boring update. WHAT OF IT?

HAPPY NEW PRESIDENT EVERYONE!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. So glad Obama is in and already making some nice changes.

Of course, it’s hard to think about that when you have an incredibly important exam tomorrow.

That’s right, from 9am until midday I will be in a three hour exam. It consists of an hour of writing an essay in Japanese, an hour of translating Japanese into English, and an hour of answering comprehension questions about a random text. After that I have a short listening exam and a speaking exam next week, plus a 3 hour exam about Japan’s minorities, then I am finished!

Well, until second semester starts on Feb 9th, that is…

In other news, if you enjoy reading essays in Japanese (and who doesn’t?!) then click the link below firmly and be magically transported to my latest Lang-8 essay;

FACEBOOKやエスエヌエス・サイトについて

I’ll be twittering as soon as I can after the exam so keep watching the ‘News…’ section to the right to see how terribly it went. Once I’m back in lectures and out of revision I can start posting again on a regular basis. I promise!

“In west Sheffield born and raised

In the arts tower is where I spent most of my days”

The Mighty Arts Tower (Click For Fullsize)

Some people have been wondering where I actually study Japanese, here’s your answer – about six to eight floors up, inside this monstrosity. Well, I say monstrosity, the truth is I love this thing, it’s really a shame we’re moving out after Christmas.

Still, it was a little boring heading up 18 floors on Monday mornings last year…

So I’m back in the UK! The journey itself wasn’t too bad, I watched some great films on the flight (21 & The Kite Runner were both excellent) and I’m reasonably well rested now, although going drinking with my old friends having got off the plane three hours ago was a poor choice, but it was definitely worth it in the end!

University looks great this year. Here’s my exciting timetable;

What I get up to every week

I wrote about exactly what each part of my course consists of here, so I won’t bother doing that again! I’m also working hard with Japan Society this year, as Vice-President, to produce something similar to both Japan Day and our Soran Bushi dance in 2009. I also joined Tae Kwon Do this year, and I’m planning to dedicate myself pretty intensely to it (four training sessions a week!) to vent my rage over complex grammar problems!

So it all kicks off, as you can see from my wonderful timetable up there, at 9am on Monday. Here’s to another good year! In other news, Translation Station 3 is due to appear before too long, stay tuned on Youtube and here!

This entire post is based on things I’ve heard from current 2nd years, been told by various lecturers or read on my university email. I wanted to talk about it as it will give you guys an idea of what we can specialise in, and what I’m going to be waffling on about for the next year!

There are three mandatory modules I take next year. Two of them are core language modules, Japanese Language III (Autumn) and Japanese Language IV (Spring). The other one is similar to last semester’s Understanding Japan module. It’s called Contempary Japanese Society (Spring) and apparently prepares us for our year abroad. Exciting stuff.

What I’m more excited about are the optional modules I’ve chosen. The first, Postwar Japanese Politics, I chose partially because I enjoy writing about politics on this blog, and mainly because although I’ve never had an interest in politics, I think it might be beneficial to have one for the future. Plus, this way I can write even more stupid updates about building underwater trains or whatever.

The second is Japan’s Minorities, an interesting course considering until not long ago the Japanese government issued statements that there are no minorities in Japan. We do in-depth study on Koreans, Ainu and Burakumin amongst others. I really can’t express how excited I am about this module! Who knows, I may even be able to find a little humour somewhere and do an update someday.

I’ve saved the most interesting module for last – Understanding Japan Through Contemporary Texts. The idea is by translating novels, newspapers, journals and blogs, we can learn more about contemporary opinions and so forth. Rumour has it I may even have to swallow my pride and get my nerd hat on, as we will be translating a manga, too.

So there you go. A short and pretty boring update about my course. Why did I post this? Well, if anyone has any interest in how UK university works, or Japanese courses, or if anyone is thinking of coming to Sheffield, they can read this and all their deepest, darkest desires will be fulfilled

If on the other hand you found this boring, normal service resumes soon. See you then.