I’ve been sent a new certificate to say that I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It turns out that they had used the wrong characters to write “Osaka” (the test location). They had printed 大坂 instead of 大阪. It’s not very different, and I certainly didn’t notice it when I was checking the important stuff like my name. Although those characters have also been used historically to write Osaka, they are considered incorrect today.

Osaka is the second largest city in Japan, and this is supposed to be the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, so they must be embarrassed about that mistake. I suppose that’s why they have sent me a prepaid envelope to return the incorrect original.

Incidentally, I had a look at the back of the certificate:

The examinee has mastered grammar to a relatively high level, knows around 1,000 Kanji and 6,000 words, and has the ability to converse, read, and write about matters of a general nature.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? I wonder if it’s actually true in my case.