Many wonder what is the best way to come to Japan. From my point of view, the best way to come to Japan to work in a business in your own country and then be transferred to Japan. But we all know that this option is quite difficult.

The second option that I like is coming to Japan on a scholarship for a first contact and then you can even get a job in the company offering the scholarship.
First I thought that there was little scholarship to come to Japan, but lately I've noticed that there are many more scholarships than the famous Vulcanus scholarship and known by all.

The famous JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) has a page dedicated to scholarships , which contains a list of 6 official organizations that offer "Intership" in Japan.

In the website of the Embassy of Japan in Spain can also find many scholarship programs (pity that the Embassy of Spain in Japan has no website).

Another website had never heard of but it seems it is for interim by many companies is Internabroad .

Certainly nothing is lost in all these organizations entering and leaving all the CV.

As many of you all know, the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test or Japanese: nōryoku shiken) is a test to evaluate and certify the level of Japanese people outside Japan.
This test basically consists of three parts: vocabulary / kanji, written comprehension and understanding auditva.

A few months ago announced some changes in this test system. Some of these changes are:

- Levels of JLPT who were divided into four levels, to become five levels from 2010. Including the new level between Level 2 and 3. I guess this will change to Level 3 only had about 300 kanji to be known, but the level 2 and are 1000 kanji.

- Level 1 will increase even more difficulty.

- So far, the review could only be made once a year, performing the exam on the same day around the world, which was the first Sunday of December. From next year, will also level 1 and 2 in July.

- From 2010 stop publishing the notes and previous tests in the official website .

I find some very interesting changes, especially to have a more level and making examinations twice a year. One of the main reasons why I've never done it because having the JLPT level 3 seemed to me something that proved nothing and yet the level 2 had to be known very many kanji to pass the exam. I will encourage more kanji to study and introduce the new level in 2010.

For those of you who are studying Japanese or for those who still have difficulties with the kanji, there is an "addon" for Firefox called Rikaichan where you can see the meaning and reading Japanese characters just by mousing over the characters. This addon translated from Japanese to English, German, French or Russian.

With this addon I find it very easy to read pages in Japanese where I just want to translate the kanji I do not know or words not meaning to read it though. The truth is that this is much easier than having to go cutting and pasting into a translator.

In this link you can download the addon and this page you can download the dictionary needed to implement rikaichan.

For that you have some news of me, I want to clarify that the reason why these days I'm not able to post is because I am studying to take off my Cisco CCNA certified, so since last week when I finish work I go home and studio to get me the certificate, which I have planned to get the first sacandome CCENT (ICND1) with a test, and then do one more exam (ICND2) to become a CCNA.
With this certificate will I get my salary increase and add enough value to my CV and my company to have more people certified.

I hope I can soon tell you that I have my first certificate and be able to find time for blogging.

This can be a very controversial issue but with no intention to offend anyone, simply intended to gather comments on all points of view.

As we all know, the past summer I took in Fusion Systems Japan as "Infrastructure Engineer", some comments on this post were: - How do you catch an engineer if you're just a senior technician? -. Well, here comes the first controversial question A engineer is the one with the title or the one who does the work of an engineer?. In my case, I did in Spain in upper management systems, and therefore I am senior technician in system administration, but from the first day I took in the company I work now I took as an engineer and infrastructure what it says on my internal card company because the work I'm doing is what an engineer would.
In my opinion, is more engineer who is really doing the work of an engineer who has the title of engineer and doing other things. For example, in Japan there are many people who graduate as engineers in college and then do very different jobs as a secretary, marketing etc.

One thing that I have much to do several interviews with foreign companies in Japan is that I think most companies consider the experience or certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, VMWare etc himself a university degree and that is why most companies in Japan, give bonuses, pay for this kind of securities or even sometimes put logos of these certifications in the "business card". For my company, when I saw the job interview I did the full course of " Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer ", but never did any of the exams, so from the first moment I said that the company increases ¥ 500,000 annual salary for each certificate that is achieved, so yesterday I performed the examination of MCP and pass.

If you were the heads of a company Who you will take up first, an engineer with one year of college experience or a Senior Technician (or derivatives) and also a year of work experience but with some Cisco certifications, Microsoft etc?

One of the things I say quite the Japanese is that I have a talk very "kawaii" or "cute" (nice), but not because they speak very well, but because it looks like a Japanese fine, so fine I'm talking about the same than girls.
In the Japanese language has many distinctions of words for boys and girls words. Not that there's a grammar rule for this, but if there are words widely used by a genre or another and so when you use the opposite gender seems odd. For example, there's more words to talk about the girls, which is usually more formal and that the kids also can use it, but overuse of these words by the guys seem to speak of a girl.

What happens to me in Japanese, I think that happens quite foreign to the subject that I told a few weeks ago about the difficulty in making Japanese friends and how easy it is to make Japanese friends , therefore, continually talking only girls, you learn Japanese, but I did not know at first is that some of those words are usually used only by girls, so then when you speak Japanese, you talk like girls and tell you that you speak a very Japanese "Kawaii" (cute), as the Japanese of the boys is usually more dirty and a little more rude.

Here I put some examples of words used by the boys and girls, I hope that we all help me to put more examples.

Meaning Boys Girls

Maji ookii CYOU dekai Very large

Oishi Umai Good (Food)

Pray Watashi / Boku I

Benjyo Otearai WC

Meshi Gohan Lunch

Onaka suita Hara Hetta I have hunger

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the Japanese of the girls is closer to the formal Japanese, and if you get used to using words too young and do not control the use in public when we can bring problems. I was talking a while with my Korean friends say "Omae" (you) instead of "anata" (you) and when I escaped the saying "Omae" other people looked at me with loving face killing, as "Omae "It's pretty dirty or derogatory.

Two weeks ago we discussed in class onomatopoeia, and the truth is that although I knew a few is a very fun to study, since it is curious to see how the sounds of things are not as they seem to Spanish, and Indeed when I went to England also had different onomatopoeia.
The Japanese onomatopoeia divided into two groups, "giseigo" for what is supposed to be the talk of animals, and "gitaigo" for noise.

Then I put some examples:

Giseigo
- The barking of a dog: wan wan ワンワン.
- The mewing of a cat: ニャーニャー nya nya.
- The crowing of a rooster: コケコッコー kokekokko.
- The lowing of a cow moo moo モーモー.
- The song of a bird: チュンチュン chunchun.
- The song of a crow: kaa kaa カーカー.

Gitaigo
- The sound of a little rain: パラパラ parapara.
- The noise of heavy rain: Zaa Zaa ザーザー.
- The noise by banging a door トントン tonton.
- A smile has no sound, but the Japanese refer to a small smile ニッコリ Nikkori saying.
- The sound of laughter ニコニコ nikoniko.
- When someone gets angry, anger say anger does イライラ.
- When someone speaks a language very well stranger, they say speaks ペラペラ pear pear.
- The sound of a drop ポタリ potari.
- The sound of pota pota ポタポタ many drops.