JLPT December 2009 results are out !! I have cleared JLPT Level 1

The JLPT December 2009 results are out !! I have cleared JLPT level 1, but with the minimum passing marks available !! :)

I got 280/400 = 70% which is in fact the passing percentage criteria for JLPT Level 1.
I got 72/100 marks in Vocabulary, 67/100 marks in Listening and 141/200 marks in Reading and grammar.

Even though I got perfect 70%, I am not sad or disappointed. Considering the time available for me from my daily routine and job, I tried my level best and gave my best shot.

One more interesting point to consider is that I passed JLPT level 1 in 3 years from the point I started learning Japanese language. This in itself is a good feat considering that people take minimum 4 years to get upto that level. This is in Indian context not sure about the condition in other countries.

Even though I have passed JLPT Level 1, I know that I have some weak areas and some strong areas to think about.
First the strong areas:
1. Good at IT related Japanese language
2. Good at Business Japanese.
3. Good at recognizing Kanji and words.
4. Good at analysing graphs, tables, IT business related content.

The weak areas:
As I learnt most of the Japanese language on my own, there are many weak areas if I compare myself with other students who have gone through the traditional run of the mill.
1. Weak at Giseigo, gitaigo. (Onomatopoeia and other similar words in Japanese)
2. Weak at adverbs. (Words without Kanjis)
3. Relatively weak at culture, traditional aspects of Japanese language(taught at universities)

From now on, I plan to concentrate on my weak areas and try to maintain the aspects of my Japanese language where I am good.
For the time being, I need some rest after the hectic schedule which I had for the entire year balancing my job, its deadlines, my Japanese language classes, assignments, etc.

I hope and I am confident that I will surely crack this exam with good marks next time !!

JETRO Business Japanese Test (BJT), November 2009 results out!! I got J2 !!

I got the results of JETRO Business Japanese Test today. Though the results were out in Japan sometime ago, I got the result in Pune today.

I got J2 grade with 4 other students getting the same grade. On a personal note, !!I have got the highest marks in Pune center :)

The qualifications for JETRO BJT J2 grade are shown here.
The qualifications in short are:
1. Able to communicate appropriately in Japanese in limited range of business situations.

Party time folks !!

My result sheet:

Canon Electronics Office: An Office without chairs!!

Sometime ago, I came across this article, but could not find time to post it on my blog. This article is quite old (published in May 2009). But, I thought of posting it on web as very few people in India know about the “strange”, “innovative”, “bizarre” initiative by Canon Electronics. With all due credit to the reporter of this news, I am just translating the content from Japanese to English with some opinions from my side. :)

(Chichibu factory, Canon Electronics)

The reporter went to Canon Electronics office, Chichibu factory, to find that there are absolutely no chairs in their office, barring a few exceptions like reception room. Chichibu office has no chairs in meeting rooms, development centers, administrative department, needless to say no chairs in president’s office as well!!

The President and CEO, Mr. Hisashi Sakamaki has written a book about this with the title – “Get Rid of Chairs, Computers and Grow Your Business”. In that book, he advocates such strong measures in his organization.

According to “Get Rid of Chairs”, as a result of removing chairs, annual meeting hours were reduced by half due to increasing concentration during meetings. In addition, communication among the standing employees became closer, which dramatically improved the accuracy and speed of resolving problems in the office. “The merits of removing chairs (such as cutting expenses and reducing space) are immeasurable.” said president Sakamaki in his book.


Employees were working with their PCs and answering phones, standing. Desks wore wooden “sandals” to adjust their heights to standing positions.

Employees walk so well, so as to make sure that they do not disturb anybody. They go back and forth so often between their desks and shelves for common use, placed in the back and passages of their office.

Papers and materials necessary for work are not kept on their desks but in the shelves. This is also one the reforms by President Sakamaki. To save time looking for papers and materials, everything for common use in the department or group were not possessed personally, but kept in those shelves.



Walking for some moments might be comfortable rather than standing still. Their employees’ desk looked so neat because of there is no special need to collect papers. Cleaning up desks is also what President Sakamaki recommends in “Get Rid of Chairs”.

The Walking Speed Machine

This is another initiative coming from President Sakamaki’s book. There is a blue painted zone in the hallway which says, “5 m 3.6 seconds”.



There are sensors installed at both ends of the 5m zone, which will sound an alarm in case someone could not pass through in 3.6seconds. “We got a big factory. We can’t ignore the time we spend moving around. This is a gadget for our employees to experience how fast to walk.” said president Sakamaki.


Well, what are we heading towards? Your views, opinions on this one? Is this a
reform to go ahead with considering the health centric, environmentalist approach which Japan follows? OR is it just insane and inhumane?

Google Japan launches Google Japanese Input (IME) beta version

Google Japan’s development section announced on Google Japan official blog a project started from their famous 20% rule” produced a new Japanese input method “Google Japanese Input” application, both for Windows and Macintosh (currently for Intel 32 bit only, no 64 bit support).

After installation, you may choose Google IME(Input Method Environment) on your operating system.

For choosing Google IME, go to Regional and Language Options -> Languages -> Details.

In the Default Input language drop down, choose Google IME. After choosing, you can use Google IME on your system as shown below.

Then, your Japanese typing calls the IME. The user interface is not much different from other IME so no Japanese user should have difficulty to use.

The major advantages of Google IME are :

1. IME tools allow you to import/export your own dictionary difinitions, switch keybind to some popular existing input methods. You can optionally send all your typing and choices to Google server to improve their social dictionary for better conversion algorithm, which is also supported by other commercial and open source input method tools.

2. Google has massive Japanese data by their collecting web pages, which indexed and processed for search and Google suggest. That is a big advantage for showing better Japanese candidates. On the other hand, their boasting “automatically generate from texts on the web” approach may tend to show more colloquial results, popular choices than grammatically correct choices.

As an example of Google IME intelligence, if you type　今日（きょう） which means today, the available options in the IME drop down list are as follows:

Google displays not only the reading, but also uses intelligence to show today's date as one of the possible candidates of the enteret text, even though the reading of the entered text and candidate's text differ.

Historically, Japanese input method environment(IME) on personal computer has a long history because it is the critical application everyone needs, since 100-letters keyboard cannot handle over 3,000 letters in any way.

In MS-DOS era, there are many commercial IME competed, but for Windows and Macintosh, Operating System bundles one default embedded IME, purchased from Japanese companies, and most people are using that, except few people including professional writers who buy commercial IME such like ATOK by Just System, which once was the biggest Japanese word processor provider.

As IME is “more popular than web browser” application for Japanese, this release is causing a lot of buzz now and Japanese twitter timelines are now flooded with which minor/niche phrases/proper nouns they tested with the Google IME were properly converted, or not.

Download and give it a try !! :)

Google Talk About: An innovative service from GOOGLE for chatting in foreign languages

Do you wish to chat with your friends in Japanese, but are sick of changing the keyboard layout or copy pasting from Japanese Editors?
Are you messed up with Japanese encoding which makes the text into MOJIBAKE?

If you are facing the same problems, please see the link below:
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2007/12/merry-christmas-god-jul-and.html
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2008/06/more-translation-bots.html

For people who want to chat in Japanese, follow the steps given below:

1. Add en2ja@bot.talk.google.com to your gtalk/ gmail from "Add Contact"
2. You will see an entry in your friends list by name - "en2ja"
3. Start chatting with this FRIEND :)

P.S: Do not use shortened words like - "How r u?" Use full words like - How are you?

You will be surprised to see the response !! :)

Special attention:
As this is machine translation and that too at its initial stages, this is in quite a preliminary stage still.
You can chat in other languages as well.
Please see the above mentioned links for the details.

Japanese business letters using Microsoft Office 2003 and later

In Japan, business letters are used very frequently and you often have to read a lot of Japanese business letters, if you are working in a typical Japanese business environment.

In that context, a typical Japanese business letter starts with a salutation of season and salutation of appreciation. A typical letter ends with salutation and appreciation about the company.We usually have a tough time writing the business letters or reading the business letters, especially the 挨拶（あいさつ）Greeting, salutation part.

Microsoft Office 2003 and later provides a wonderful solution to this problem. It has a toolbar called – あいさつ文 or (Japanese Greetings).
The toolbar can be accessed by –
1. If you are using English version of Microsoft Office 2003 or later, go to View -> Toolbars -> Japanese Greetings.
2. If you are using Japanese version of Microsoft Office 2003 or later, go to 表示（Ｖ）-> ツールバー-> あいさつ文

Once you open, you see a dialog as shown below:


After opening this dialog, there are different options for Japanese greetings viz. Greeting, Opening salutations, And Closing salutations.
On pressing “Greeting” button you can see the following screenshot:




In this dialog, you can select the salutations, greetings for different months.

In addition, there are other options such as “Opening” salutation, closing salutations which are shown as below:
Opening salutation, words, and greetings:


Closing salutation, words, and greetings:



This really helps for a person who knows Japanese but is not that comfortable with writing Japanese business letters. This toolbar also saves our time in framing the correct salutation for a specific time. In addition, this can be really helpful for a person who is preparing for JETRO BJT (Business Japanese Test).

You can select the salutation sentences as per your wish and the salutation, greetings part of the Japanese business letter is done in a minute or two !!

Google launches “near-instant voice translation”

Google held a major demonstration on December 7th 2009 at the Computer History Museum and displayed a number of incredible new features. Vic Gundotra, vice-president of engineering for Google showed off five great innovations.

But the one that is of interest to linguists was the "near-instant voice translation" service . This prototype allows you to search the web via voice, which is an amazing breakthrough, but it also provides near-instant translation. The initial prototype can handle only English to Spanish at the moment, and handles all the translation work in the cloud via your mobile phone.

Gundotra spoke a paragraph's worth of words into his phone and within seconds the phone recited a translated version back in Spanish. Google hopes to have support for all the world's major languages completed sometime in 2010.

This is an amazing development in the use of machine translation, but it has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Just like the machine translation we already know it will never be 100% accurate, and due to the differing accents and tones in peoples voices will probably give an even worse result than typed machine translation.

Though it has some short comings as stated above, Google should be applauded for this major development. However, it will take a lot of time and research before such applications replace humans for translation/interpretation. In the meantime, professional interpreters and transcribers are safe in their jobs. :)