The Big Apple

Following last weekend’s shenanigans with the Theta Chi formal and AXO blind date, I got a ride in the back of a U-haul van to South Station at 2AM on Sunday morning to catch a bus to New York. My destination was Columbia University, where the 2005 Japanese Language Proficiency Test was being administered.

Arriving in the city at 5:50AM, I stepped off the bus into the middle of a blizzard in Chinatown. I could barely see across the street and therefore felt like quite a vagabond while I trudged around looking for a subway stop that would take me uptown. A woman who got off the bus with me couldn’t speak English very well and didn’t know where we were so I tried to explain to her friend on a cell phone what street corner the bus had deposited us. Without a map I walked toward a large glowing pagoda which ended up being Chinatown’s main informational booth. Finding a subway station I followed the D line to 59^th street where I switched to the 1 and rode it to the Columbia campus.

With plenty of time to kill, I did a final review of Japanese before walking around the Columbia premises down to 105^th street. I was thrilled to be on my own in the city even though snow drifts made walking in street shoes a difficult process. I grabbed a sandwich at a local deli before traipsing back to campus for the test.

Outside of the test hall I was spotted by Janna, my exchange student friend from Japan who I had not seen since returning home (she is now an art major at VCU). She was there with her friend from Columbia and he gave us directions downtown for when we finished the test. Janna and I talked for a while about old times before the test began.

The test itself was not amazingly difficult but there were plenty of tricky parts. I was more surprised by the number of people attending the event; over 100 coming from as far away as Pittsburgh for the examination. The JLPT is only offered once a year in select cities around the world so I suppose I was lucky to have a relatively short commute.

After the test Janna and I caught a bus (for free, the meter wasn’t working) downtown into Rockefeller Plaza and Times Square. Most of the snow had melted from the multitudes of people plodding on the sidewalk and we window shopped at a few stores before finding a Japanese bookstore next to the famed Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Continuing with the Japanese vein we ate curry and udon for dinner at a small restaurant near Times Square run by a Japanese-speaking guy from Mexico (an interesting contrast from the Mexican restaurant on MIT campus which is owned by a Japanese guy). After dinner we took pictures in Times Square, bought some cheap souvenirs, and boarded a train back to Columbia.

At the station I bid farewell to Janna and caught another train into Chinatown for my trip back to Boston. I got home early the next morning, caught a cab back to Theta Chi, and slept through most of my classes the following day.

At only $15 a ticket I can’t wait to go back to NY, as long as no tests are involved.