椅子に座って

First, I need to work out a dilemma. Should I apply for the JLPT Level 2 test? Let’s consider pros and cons:

Pros:

1) It would give me a solid goal to aim for, and be something I could feel proud of if I accomplished it.

2) It would motivate me to actually go ahead and learn kanji and vocab, which would be very useful.

3) If I passed, it would be something concrete to put on my resume that might possibly open up job opportunities working in Japanese communities or even in Japan.

Cons:

1) I would feel obligated to go to class most Sundays, which makes things like weekend trips logistically and morally harder. Plus, that class probably wouldn’t be that much fun in any case.

2) In order to mail the application on time, I’d have to drive to Toyooka after school today, try to find a way to get a 2cm x 3cm picture of myself taken, and then ask for time off tomorrow to go to the post office. All of that is quite a hassle and I don’t feel like doing it.

3) The test costs 5500 yen to take, and might involve taking nenkyuu (paid vacation) to go to the test site, which might not be very close. Plus the money it would take to travel to the test site, too.

4) I do not *need* to take this test for any practical purpose. If in the future I find I suddenly want my Japanese proficiency measured and validated, I can probably find a way to do that from America.

5) While it would force me to study, I ought to be able to force myself to study in any case. With all the lists of kanji and vocab currently in my notebook just from the stories I’ve been reading, even if I just studied those well I would learn several hundred kanji this fall. In fact studying for the test might take up time that I could be spending just as productively and more enjoyably studying Japanese from stories and novels and songs.

6) I don’t want to overbook myself. It’s only been a month and already I’m doing the volunteer group thing, singing a capella, taking once-a-week Japanese lessons, and hopefully soon will be doing at least one English conversation class in the evenings. Plus I want to keep up with math and with reading Japanese fiction, and with socializing with people around here, and travelling, and I still want to find a way to do art or shodo, and I need to get some exercise somehow, and knowing myself I know I’ll need some time to crash and write blog posts and emails and catch up with people on Skype. Given all of that, should this test be a priority?

Okay, if we’re measuring on word count the cons clearly win. The real question is, am I just making up excuses to talk myself out of it because I don’t feel like driving to Toyooka today? Will I regret it tomorrow?

Eh, I’ll deal.

So today was the first day of classes. I gave my self-introduction three times, all first-year classes. I definitely got better at it each time, which isn’t shocking – that happens when you don’t practice something at all, heh. The students were by and large very quiet and unresponsive, which I’d been warned at some of the orientations to expect: apparently the students are sort of trained not to be very boisterous and chatty during class. Still, of course it’s disconcerting to be talking about myself and random music and TV shows I like and such and have thirty seventh-graders staring blankly at me. But I think most of them had heard of Chip and Dale, and the Beatles, and Yugioh, so that was good. The girls in the third class (1組) were the most outgoing, and when at the end of class they had to come up to me and give a self-introduction and have me sign their notebook as proof that they did it, a bunch of them wanted me to sign big across the whole back of their notebook, and/or in little autograph books that they were carrying. One girl had a little picture of Chip in her wallet which she showed me, another girl said she had a little Dale doll, and a third told me she had Yugioh cards too. So that made me happy. And also made me think that probably in the other classes some of the students had such things as well, but had been too shy to talk to me about it. One girl in 1組 bursts out laughing whenever I say or do anything, and says “aaah kawaiiii!!” (So cuuuuute!) Uh, thanks? I think?

Tomorrow I have two second-year classes, and then the remaining first-year class. And then a three-day weekend! Woot. And next week, 二中.

Here are some lyrics, not because they’re relevant to anything, but because I like the song and these are the only lyrics I know off the top of my head, heh:

本当はスターになりたい君が
何も出来ず、椅子に座ってる。。。

P.S. It’s probably pretty bad that, while I’d seen today’s date written up on the board and on various papers on my desk, and have known it was the beginning of September for a while, it didn’t consciously occur to me that today is September 11th until I was typing in the name of this word document (blog post 9-11-08). I’m twenty-two and a half today...I guess that means it’s been just under a third of my total life since 9/11/01. It would be interesting to ask some people here how they experienced that day, what the news coverage was like here. Meanwhile, here are some more relevant lyrics, courtesy of Tom Paxton:

And when we met them on the stairs,
They said we were too slow.
Get out, get out, they yelled at us,
The whole thing’s gonna blow.
They didn’t have to tell us twice,
We’d seen the world on fire.
We kept on running down the stairs,
While they kept climbing higher.

Now every time I try to sleep,
I’m haunted by the sound
Of firemen climbing up the stairs
While we were running down...

P.P.S. Do you think it's a bad sign when, of everything I could do for the next couple hours before bed -- write a story, study Japanese, do dishes/clean, make stuff for my bulletin board -- I seem to have chosen to spend ten dollars to download Care Bears The Movie II from iTunes and watch it? I don't even like Care Bears. I give up on analyzing my own psyche. Okay, I am going to do the damn dishes now. Right now. Then I'll, uh, reward myself (?) with the movie. Sheesh.