So, my Thesaurus tells me that I should use words such as occupied, engaged, involved, employed, working, hard at work, hard-pressed, swamped, up to one's neck; on the job, absorbed, engrossed, immersed, preoccupied or words to that effect to describe my current situation. But I think that you all have gotten used to busy so I will just stick with that. We've had a few big earthquakes and a typhoon or two, but I live in a brand new building and didn't even notice them.

School has been proceeding uneventfully. I haven't actually been to class much at all recently, because I have had a lot of elementary school visits, and we had midterm tests and practice for the chorus festival and student elections. Last week I had 4 elementary school visits out of five days, which actually went pretty well because the teachers at the schools where I work now are good and either make good plans in advance or let me make the plans for them. So I was exhausted but not stressed out. This week we had mid-term tests. They were actually supposed to be last week, explaining why I was "available" to go to 4 elementary schools, but because the tennis and baseball teams kept winning in the sports tournaments, they weren't around to take the tests, so we had to put the tests off until they lost. So the tests were Monday, and then Tuesday was spent returning the tests and going over the answers, which doesn't really involve me either. Then Wednesday I went to elementary school again. I have actually been to only one class this week because of all this. Doesn't actually sound particularly busy, right?

But I have been busy. I looked at the material for this Kanji test, and noticed that I didn't know any of it. So I have been studying my ass off. I sit around studying Kanji for at least 3 or 4 hours a day. Most of that I am seriously concentrating, but I also look at the kanji when I am like in the bathroom or watching TV and so on. There's really an immense amount of crap I have to cram into my head by Saturday. The problem is, I have to not only learn how to write about 600 kanji, maybe half of which I can already read, but I also have to learn a lot of vocabulary in which the kanji are used, because that's the way the tests are set up. Obviously, if they just said to write the kanji for "kan (感間官管完関)," you couldn't do it because there are a dozen kanji that can be pronounced like that. And they can't even just give you the word, because there are several words with the same pronunciation, but completely different meanings, like "kanshin(関心感心)." So they give you a sentence, and the word that you are supposed to write in kanji is written in katakana. SO, it's no help being able to write kan, if I don't know all the meanings of kanshin. Of course, Japanese kids already know all the words, and just have to learn how to write them. But I have to learn the words too. Pain in the ass. Anyway, I spend all my time writing out lots of different words using each of the kanji that's on the test. Although I have only gotten through about half the kanji so far.

It seems to be working though. I have a bunch of practice tests from previous years, and I have been taking one a day to chart my progress. The first one I took like a week ago, and I couldn't even get 40%. But today I managed for the first time to get slightly over the 70% needed to pass. So that's good. I still have a little time left today, and all of tomorrow to study, So hopefully I can get to a comfortable level, although a lot of it is still up to chance. If all the kanji from the end o the list come up, I am still screwed. Well, not really screwed, because I don't need to pass at all. It's useless for getting a job or anything like that, because it's really a test for elementary school kids. But all of my kids have been impressed that I am taking it, and claim that they couldn't pass it. Which for the most part, I believe.