Posts for 'Travel'

Well, I’m pretty much packed now. Off to Japan!

I hear the whether is pretty cool over there right now. So much so that a little snow is even falling in Osaka.
Anyway, I have a great many things to do over there, including catching up with friends, lots of skiing, as well as lots of buying heheheh. XD

My plan is to try and update the blog as I go, half so people can see the crazy crap I’m up to, half so I can have a diary to remember this trip by.

I’ll also see about adding lots of pictures as well, both to here and my Facebook and mixi.

Until then, see you later!

Hello again! I’m already 2 days into my holidays and enjoying it very much! It’s been pretty busy so far, so I thought I’d post a bit of an update on what’s going on.

Last weekend was RFLan #24. As far as RFLans have gone, I think this was quite possibly the best one yet. Thankfully, we toned it down a bit since last time, and only roughly 230 people came instead of over 300! We thoroughly planned to power and networking systems this time, and as a result, we had absolutely no issues whatsoever. Because of this, I was luckily able to get a lot of quality game time down! I played mostly Left 4 Dead and TF2, as well as made a few new Steam buddies.

Next up, I’ve spent a bit more time working on my main shot for Cosmos. It’s taken a day or so of work, but it’s definitely taking shape now! Since my last update, I’ve refined the animation much better, remodeled some bits of the patrol ship, changed some of the colours, as well as added some more visual effects. It shouldn’t be too much longer before I can lock this in for a final render!

If I get time after this, I’ll see about writing up a bit of a brief of how I’m doing all of it. 🙂

Finally, I figured I probably should announce this on my blog now, it’s one of the main reasons I made it hehe.

I’m going back to Japan again!! 😀

It’s all my father’s crazy planning, he wants to go check out the town I worked in last year since he loved the photos I have of it. So we’re going back for 2 weeks, one of them being a ski trip, and the other being a week of playing around the country… mainly Tokyo. I’m very happy about this since it’s already been more than a year since I last went to Japan.
I’m also trying to see how feasible/expensive it would be to travel down to Osaka from Tokyo so I might be able to catch up with all of the friends I have down there. 🙂

In any case, when I go, I intend to ramp up the number of blog posts I do here to document everything I do over here hehe.

Should be good. Gotta start packing!

The exam is over.

It was hard.

There was lots of kanji.

And there were lots of really complex words.

I need to practice this crazy language more.

But… I’m remaining cautiously optimistic that I did alright. XP

Yup, here we go. The time’s finally come haha. The JLPT level 2 exam for 2008 is on at 12:00pm tomorrow!!

Studying for this exam has been pretty damn weird. I don’t really know if there is a clear-cut way of trying to cram one’s head with 1000 Chinese symbols and 3000 words in just under a year, and if anyone knows of a really good way for next time, please tell me hehe.

I spent the majority of today pouring over my kanji chart updating it with the kanji that I learnt from Kumon in the interim, the practice exams and from my iPhone’s kanji trainer. All in all, I know roughly 350 symbols now, so we’ll see how that goes.

At the moment, I’m feeling very ambivalent towards this. Not really nervous… but not excited either. That’ll probably change tomorrow, but here’s hoping my feelings are the right ones for this kinda thing.

Either way, I think I attained what I wanted out of this exam, and that was motivate myself to improve my Japanese ability, even if it was a little. Because of this exam, I went to town with my Kumon lessons, I sat down and watched tonnes more Japanese TV than I normally do, I took part in several interesting Japanese events around Perth and made some new friends, as well as I just sat down and wrote stuff… which I usually don’t do… ever. I’m hoping this is becoming apparent in the Japanese entries I’ve written on this blog as well hehe.

That being said, passing it would be icing on the cake, but I won’t be very disappointed if I don’t.

Well… apart from the fact that I’d probably have to go through all of this again next year as well. XD

To all of my friends I know who is doing the JLPT exam as well this year (especially the crazy hardcore ones doing JLPT1!!!), I wish you the very best of luck!

Here we go!! 😀

Ookay, as of writing this, it’s now officially less than one week until the 2008 JLPT exam. :O

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam (ie JLPT) is an international exam held world-wide every year that non-native speakers of Japanese can undertake in the hopes of gaining a professional qualification on how l33t one’s Japanese ability is. The levels range from Level 4 through 1 where 4 is the easiest, and 1 is exceptionally difficult, even for most Japanese people.

This year, I figured on choosing level 2 which is usually gauged by having to know approximately 1000 Chinese symbols and approximately 4000 words. It’s a significant leap from level 3 which is something like 300 Chinese symbols and 1000 words only. 😛

As of right now, it’s pretty much sunk in on how totally screwed I am for this exam hahahah. XP

As much as I hate to admit it, after going through as much material as I can, my Japanese is no where near that level. In the practice exams I’ve taken so far, every right answer was basically dumb luck haha. O_o

So… I’m taking a step back and considering my position now.

I’ve pretty much resolved myself to that even if I do pass this exam, it would probably be by luck, not my Japanese ability. And if that’s the case, then that’s something that I truly do not want.

For a time, I was also wondering if maybe I should have done level 3 instead. Level 3 is significantly easier, so much so that I got 100% on one of the practice exams I tried. So with that in mind, level 2 is the only way to go. There’s no point in aiming for anything if you’re not aiming up. So with that in mind, I do not regret not choosing level 3. ;P

So, I’m remembering back to the promise I made to myself when I sent the application form away. It doesn’t matter if I pass this exam or not. If by doing this it improves my Japanese ability, even by a little, then it is totally worth it. 🙂

On that note, this isn’t a decree of giving up. It’s a decree on how I plan to try my best still and if necessary, go down with all guns blazing. 😀

There’s still a week to go and I’m going to give it my all to the best that I can muster hehe.

And anyway, there’s always next year! XD