I got my scores back for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (level 3) I took back in December, after which I wrote:

It's hard for me to sum up my experience of it; some questions were easy for me, and others were incomprehensible. A passing score would be 60%, and when the results come back in March, I'll be pleasantly surprised if I pass.

I scored 72/100 on writing/vocabulary, 52/100 on listening, and 153/200 on reading/grammar, for a total of 277/400, or 69.25%—a passing grade. So I'm pleasantly surprised.

If I take the test again at the end of this year, I'd certainly take it at the same level of difficulty and try to improve my scores.

I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Test on Sunday. It's hard for me to sum up my experience of it; some questions were easy for me, and others were incomprehensible. A passing score would be 60%, and when the results come back in March, I'll be pleasantly surprised if I pass. I have a feeling I'll probably take the exam again next year, and I'll have a better idea about what things I need to work on.

Winter has settled in around here, and I'm trying to keep from getting a cold (I got my flu shot). I skipped a swimming lesson last night because I wasn't feeling that great. Yes, a swimming lesson—not for the sake of swimming, but for the sake of getting comfortable underwater so I can safely exit an accidentally overturned kayak. The class instructors are about half my age, but they seem competent enough. While the rest of the class—none of whom hesitate to plunge their heads underwater—perfects their strokes, I do my own remedial thing, practicing exhaling underwater as calmly as I can.

In movie-watching, I've been on a Yasujiro Ozu kick lately. I like his style of telling stories by showing ordinary people engaged in their daily routines in a contemporary setting. I don't care so much for Kurosawa-style historical melodrama.

I'm trying to figure out whether I want to spend the money and vacation days to go on a group trip to Kyoto next year. It looks like so much fun, at a level of "guidedness" that sounds convenient but not overbearing. It's just that it wouldn't be the trip with rebelzero to visit Tokyoite twonkie that we have in mind to undertake sometime in the next few years, and in some sense resources spent on one trip would mean less for the other.

Events I am going to in the next few months: annacon over New Year's, ShmooCon in March, and hopefully a weekend sea kayaking skills clinic in April (by which time I may have succumbed to the urge to get my own kayak).

Apropos of nothing, some sites I've started reading recently:

• xkcd, "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language"
  
• Damn Interesting, a site that has kept me up way past bedtime
  
• Pink Tentacle: art, technology (and high weirdness) from Japan
  

Less than a month remains before the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which—unlike last year—I'll show up and take, ready or not. I've been relying on this JLPT study site to tell me which vocabulary, kanji, and grammar I'll have to know for level 3. Causative and passive forms are a struggle, but I can work on those; more annoying are the grammar points that don't appear in any of my books, like the ず verb ending. For vocabulary I'm making flashcards (or post-it notes where it makes sense to me to put them somewhere in my house), studiously avoiding any kanji I don't have to know for the exam.

I've been reading Making Sense of Japanese, which I recommend to anyone learning the language. The author's light style makes it fun to read; more importantly, he explains the precise meanings of various bits of grammar that most teachers of Japanese just gloss over.

I've watched several episodes of NHK's 日本語で暮らそう learning-Japanese program, but it's mostly over my head, as is Unicom's The Preparatory Course for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, 3 kyuu Grammar Book. I don't yet seem to be at a point where I can learn efficiently from purely Japanese-language source material.

I'm making some progress studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test I plan to take in December. The level I plan to take is a stretch of my current abilities with the language. I registered for last year's test but didn't study enough to be anywhere near prepared to take it.

I've got a lot of study materials, from a textbook to kanji workbooks to JLPT practice exams to Japanese children's story books to kanji flashcards. I've found that re-watching Azumanga Daioh and jotting down important words and phrases is a less efficient but really fun way to study, too. Now that I've finished re-watching all the episodes, it's time to move on to more serious forms of study.