Asian Fail

This quote on OHinNY instantly reminded me of Pratiti – I was her Statistics tutor for a year, and each time she left more than four marks unanswered in an exam, she would moan that she would fail (I have written elsewhere about her nerdy habits, so I will not elaborate).

I have been blogging infrequently of late because I spend most of my spare time studying for my upcoming Japanese exam. In August, just before I left Tokyo, my Japanese teacher persuaded me to sign up for an exam one level higher than my actual level. This seemed like a fun challenge at the time, but there are several factors I did not take into account:

• In London I only read Japanese when I open my textbooks, whereas in Japan it was all around me.
• Here there are only two people with whom I can converse in Japanese – a Japanese lawyer (the only one in our London office) and a Buddhist priest whom I have befriended.
• I don’t have a teacher, and self-study requires a lot of discipline.
• For the level I was foolhardy enough to sign up for, they recommend 300 class hours; as of September, I had about 80.

It doesn’t help that my attitude towards the exam fluctuates every day, sometimes every minute. Some examples:

• I’ll give it my best. That way, even if I fail, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I tried.
• This is hopeless. Let’s go on Facebook.
• I left office after 11 pm every day this week; I can cut myself some slack.
• That is an excuse. We don’t do excuses.
• Let me take out my textbook. I’ll show them!
• Effing kanji.
• Do I really need to memorise the characters for 航空書簡 (Kōkūshokan = aerogram)?
• This is so awesome! I love studying!
• I’ll study tomorrow.
• I can’t fail. The humiliation!
• Effing kanji.

The upshot of all this is that I rarely blog, I don’t make fun weekend plans, and still I study much less than I could.

So now you know. In three weeks’ time, an Asian will take an Asian exam, and he will fail. Only, it won’t be an Asian fail. It will be a fail fail.