learn to speak Japanese better

On the plane back to Japan last week I was able to watch a movie in Japanese without benefit of any subtitles, and today I began reading a book in Japanese.

The Movie was Departing Osaka at 0:00, the book is ダーリングは外国人.

I’m pretty pleased with that.

The results came in yesterday and, congratulations me, I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, level 3.

What’s bothering me is that I just barely passed. 65% cumulative when I had been hoping and expecting to get closer to 75% or 80%. Essentially, after a full year of studying and working at the language, my test scores were up by 6%.

I don’t know quite how to feel about this other than to say that studying on my own just isn’t working. So now I’m thinking about hiring a Japanese teacher and getting deep into the books again, but I am frustrated.

Still, we soldier on, right?