日本語能力試験：1級
Japanese Language Proficiency Exam, Level I
I spent most of my day today at the Sagamihara campus of Aoyama Gakuin located along the Yokohama Line at the Fuchinobe Station. It takes roughly three hours to travel there from Sokendai by public transportation. Since I had to be there at 8:30 this morning, I spent the night at a nearby economy hotel.
I went there to take the "first" (or highest) level (1級) of the annual Japanese Language Proficiency Exam. I was seated in a room with 200 other foreigners all trying to pass this exam, which is designed officially to certify a student's ability to enroll in a Japanese university.
In addition to the room where I was assigned to take the test, there were at least a dozen other rooms, all holding a couple hundred foreign test takers. Furthermore, in addition to the hundreds of test takers at Aoyama Gakuin, there were still hundreds of other test sites around Japan and around the world. Each was giving the test to students of Japanese as a foreign language today.
Going into the test, I knew there would be a lot of Asians. I've taken the test before - about 8 years ago - and did pitifully. (Today, I also did pretty bad, but was, at least, not nearly as clueless as I was the first time I took it.) In any event, because I had already experienced the test - and also because it is a common observation shared among veteran test takers - I knew long before arriving today that, at level I, the population of test takers is always overwhelmingly East Asian.
The thing that struck me today, is that, had I NOT known that they were foreign residents, I surely would have assumed they were Japanese. If I were to see any of them individually, or in small groups, in a context different from that of the exam, I would certainly never see them as "foreign." It makes me realize how many non-Japanese there are indeed living in Japan, but go altogether unnoticed - at least until they open their mouths to speak.
Seeing the literally hundreds and hundreds of foreign Asian alien residents at the test site today, I felt like I had a much better understanding of how so many people around the world come to believe (mistakenly) that there are "no minorities" in Japan. The minorities here blend in so well, that they are literally invisible, in practically all public contexts.
I went there to take the "first" (or highest) level (1級) of the annual Japanese Language Proficiency Exam. I was seated in a room with 200 other foreigners all trying to pass this exam, which is designed officially to certify a student's ability to enroll in a Japanese university.
In addition to the room where I was assigned to take the test, there were at least a dozen other rooms, all holding a couple hundred foreign test takers. Furthermore, in addition to the hundreds of test takers at Aoyama Gakuin, there were still hundreds of other test sites around Japan and around the world. Each was giving the test to students of Japanese as a foreign language today.
Going into the test, I knew there would be a lot of Asians. I've taken the test before - about 8 years ago - and did pitifully. (Today, I also did pretty bad, but was, at least, not nearly as clueless as I was the first time I took it.) In any event, because I had already experienced the test - and also because it is a common observation shared among veteran test takers - I knew long before arriving today that, at level I, the population of test takers is always overwhelmingly East Asian.
The thing that struck me today, is that, had I NOT known that they were foreign residents, I surely would have assumed they were Japanese. If I were to see any of them individually, or in small groups, in a context different from that of the exam, I would certainly never see them as "foreign." It makes me realize how many non-Japanese there are indeed living in Japan, but go altogether unnoticed - at least until they open their mouths to speak.
Seeing the literally hundreds and hundreds of foreign Asian alien residents at the test site today, I felt like I had a much better understanding of how so many people around the world come to believe (mistakenly) that there are "no minorities" in Japan. The minorities here blend in so well, that they are literally invisible, in practically all public contexts.
posted by annmerry at 10:36 PM
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