Darlo's World

Well … um … hello! Remember me?

Yeah it has been a while hasn’t it, soz about that.

I really wish I could say that I’ve been on fantastic adventures in amazing worlds, but the truth is (as you might have guess from the last journal), I’ve mainly been waiting and working.

So let’s start with my exam results that I took in December. Generally I’m pretty happy. No fails, some good marks, alright marks. If I’ve worked things out rightly, if I get minimal passes this semester (not what I’m aiming for by the way) I’ll finish with a third-class honours degree, and to get a 2:2 all I need is 43s (again, now what I’m aiming for).

Classes this semester have been … actually I’ll talk about that in June once all the exams are done. Dissertation too for that matter.

Next was the result for JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). I took this test the year before and failed miserably, so in taking it this year I thought I had half a chance. Unfortunately I was wrong, and failed by just three marks. Now I’ll be the first to admit I improved in my previous score, but … three marks! Ney Mind.

Which brings us to the final update. The job interview that I went to in January was (from what I can remember, weirdly the second I closed the door on the way out my mind went completely blank) not too bad. But the wait between each recruitment stage is painfully long, not to mention the tight deadlines each stage gives its applicants (which involved me actually getting a coach down to London to hand the forms in personally as I didn’t know if they’d get there on time with the post). The job itself is an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Japan on a government run scheme called the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Programme.

Unfortunately due to the recent events that have happened in Japan, the results of the interview had to be pushed back further (they were originally scheduled for early April) until Mid-April. Last week some results had been released in the Caribbean and North America, with members of the JET Forum getting the ball rolling on announcing how they had done. Many Embassies and Consuls announce results to candidates via email, but unfortunately for us the UK still solely uses the postal service. This isn’t necessarily a negative aspect, but because it takes longer to get the results, many applicants were getting somewhat stressed.

Today on the forum, some UK members announced that they got their results. I checked the post upstairs. No result, just an ironically harsh brochure about courses in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. However, back in Telford it was another story. There was a letter from the Japanese Embassy. It was my result.

I’m shortlisted!

Yeah, I probably should explain what that means. There are three possible results from the interview: Shortlisted, Alternative, Better Luck Next Time. People who are shortlisted progress to the next stage, which is where you will be allocated a location (generally speaking everyone who is shortlisted gets the job). If a shortlisted candidate drops out for some reason, they will be replaced by an alternative (though the call happens quite last minute and can (if ever) take up until December to happen). The only real negative side to being shortlisted is that there are MORE forms to get filled out and MORE deadlines to get them done by.

Well folks, here goes!

Oh yeah and I had a tooth wrenched out from my jaw.

My my my, it has been a while since I last wrote. In fact the last time I put a real blog up (besides the Konan Uni links and Final Fantasy XIII Japanese review that is), I was talking about the sudden snow that was thrown down on our unsuspecting heads up here in Leeds. Well a few things have changed since then, the month being just one of them.

Let’s start with the easy one, exams. Well ok not quite that easy, in fact after every exam I left the room feeling I’d been completely destroyed in the head. Some exams, particularly my Japanese History exam, left me with that nagging feeling of self-doubt where I knew that I had either done fantastically well or scored worse than a celibate prostitute. Others, such as the Japanese listening exam, just smacked me in the face with a sense of failure so hard that even the worst posts on Failblog couldn’t even compare, though as a bit of a cheer-up plan, one of my Japanese buddies held a Nabe party as his place. I’ll talk about results shortly.

We did have some sad times aswell, as one of our teachers that had been with us since our first year was heading back to his hometown of Sendai. He’d been studying in Leeds as a postgraduate student, but was also teaching us. I remember his early lessons back in first year, and by that I mean early in the morning aswell. Using the Minna No Nihongo 1 Shokyu T25 (Minna No Nihongo 1 Series) book, which I still have and use (though now I use it a lot better than when we first began), we would go through various texts and discuss them. After starting again from the 8.5 months in Japan we were his students once more for another semester, but alas that time came to an end also. One student thought it would be a good idea to make him a scrap book, so a good few of us all pitched in. The picture on the right is one of the things I made. It’s (meant to be) the Leeds Uni Parkinson Building with a smily face. The text is actually a (very bad) play on words. “39″ can be read as san kyuu (lit. three nine) which can also mean “thank you” (in both Japanese and English, give it a go).

Here in Leeds, I tend to drink a lot of orange juice. It’s not because I’m gunning to be particularly healthy, but mainly because our tap water tastes like a brick, and old council house brick that someone’s pissed on after getting drunk on a night out … probably. Either way it tastes horrible. Normally I’d treck into town and get two litres of OJ from Morrisons every couple of days, which to be fair isn’t the most convenient method of staying hydrated. This soon changed after a cheeky phone conversation with my sister where she jokingly recommended I order a lot of it online and have sent via home delivery. Normally this would be done for a full grocery shop, so I sure did feel like a twat when I decided to call her bluff and ordered 59 litres of the stuff from Sainsburys, earning a few Nectar Points. When they arrived, along with a few carrots, chocolate bars and a Toblerone that I’d also ordered, the delivery man couldn’t believe what I said when I explained why I bought so much juice. He, and the other guys at the depot, apparently, thought I’d bought it all to try and sell on. That night I had the arduous task of working out where I was going to store it all, before rediscovering my tetris skills and slotting them in my wardrobe.

　

A couple of weeks back, we celebrated a friends birthday by doing an Otley Run. The Otley Run is basically a pub crawl typically done by Leeds students, beginning in Headlingley and finishing pretty much in town, and (though optional) fancy dress is normally worn. It’s the kind of pub crawl that covers such a hefty distance and number of pubs that it takes a whole day, presuming you can survive until the end that is. Facebook photographs have confirmed that I did make it the whole way, though memories are few and far between. Anyway, no one’s come back to me saying I did something I shouldn’t have (that I didn’t already know ^_~), so I’ll say it was a definate victory.

Last week was the return of LURPS, the Leeds University Rock Paper Scissors society. We had a tournament in the Old Bar and even had a guest player all the way from New Zealand. Details can be found on the LURPS website (photos coming soon).

We’ve just finished week 4 of teaching, and that does mean our exam results have been made available. I’m glad to say that I haven’t failed anything yet, though some results were bloody close. It’s also become apparent that I am much better at Japanese History in essay form rather than exam, as the exam itself severely hurt my overall mark.

Japanese Written – 53 – To be honest I’m generally happy with this, I’d have much rather got a higher score, and my practice exam clearly showed I am capable of better, but as far as written exams in Japanese go, this was a good result for me.
Japanese Listening – 46 – After the exam there were a lot of complaints about it being too difficult for our level, but to be frank I think in most cases it’s down to students not getting enough listening practice. Some students got scores upto and including 86 (out of 90), so trying to argue it’s beyond our level is pointless. In my case, I was just naff.
Critical Approach to East Asian Studies – 60 – A module that confused me throughout, and eventually turned out to be my highest scorer. 100% essay based, I was complemented on my bibliography (something I was worried about to be honest), but it was my spelling that let me down. I’ve not gone back over the essay yet, so I’ll take the markers word for it.
Organisation Management and Economics in Japan – 48 – No excuses here, 100% exam based, and I was shit.
Modern Japanese History – 50 – 50% exam and 50% essay. If only this one was 100% essay, seriously! With an overall score of 50, I scored 64 on the essay (the best mark I’ve ever got for an essay in my department), which means that I must have scored a pitiful 36 on the exam (40 is the pass mark by the way).

I also had the result for the Japanese Language Proficency Test which I sat in December. I knew all along I’d failed, but having the confirmation has finally put my mind at rest (but DAMN! 141 out of 400, that’s shit!).

So let’s end on a bit of good news eh. Think back to September, when I opened the auditions for Learn With Anna. Well the first bit of good news is that the animation is done, online and ready for you to view and enjoy. You can watch it at the LSTV website, or on Newgrounds (please vote 5 ^_~). The second bit of good news is that it’s been nominated for a NaSTA Award (National Student Television Association Award) in the animation category. Presuming no other student TV stations submit anything into this new category, then we’d get a victory by default, otherwise I’m not really holding up much hope for silverware.

Well, that’s me pretty much caught up. It’s taken a good three hours to jot this down, so if you’ve actually sat here and read all this then here’s a little reward in the shape of a very cute snowball fight.