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The Business Japanese Test held in 2009 recently delivered their results to my door. Without any further ado, I am happy to announce I got a high J2 (well above the test average). I was a little disappointed about not being in the lofty J1 or J1+ leagues, despite having JLPT 1 bragging rights! However I was close enough to J1 to make me want to try again.

Result Spread

Here is an overview of the BJT ranks and the number of people who attained each rank, out of the 2,788 people who sat the test in 2009.

Average Scores: Location Matters!

The average score overall was 473.5 points (out of 800). However these results varied based on location. The average for examinees who sat the test in Tokyo was 501.6 points, whilst examinees sitting in Beijing averaged 473.9 and test takers in India managed an average of about 428 points.

Overall, people sitting the test in Japan having a clear advantage achieved an average of 498.5, whilst those sitting the test overseas only managed an average of 449.8.

My Results: If Only I’d Studied!

Actually, I prepared for about 2 days intensively, with about 1 month of passive study. Since the subject matter is very broad, I focused on making the most of the test format. For the listening section my time saving strategy really paid off. I was in the second highest percentile for listening.

In the listening and reading section I was a little worse off, being only one percentile above the average. For the reading section, the last section of the test and the hardest, I only ranked in the average percentile. The time pressure of the reading section along with the overall high difficulty meant my answers weren’t correct enough (thank you Captain Obvious!)

Luckily though, I did make it onto the downward slope of the bell curve overall, being better than average. I will take the test again in future, and despite cries of fluency from Japanese people I meet, I admit there is a whole lot more for me to master before I can lay claim to having J1 or J1+.

That’s all for now. BJT – I’ll be seeing you again soon!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 at 2:46 pm and is filed under japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.