Level 2; and the kanji for poo!

So my JLPT results never did arrive. I guess they got lost on some clerk's desk or wedged under a conveyor belt somewhere between here and Tokyo. None too eager to make an international call, I asked Yoshie to ring up the Test Center and find out what the deal was. The guy she spoke to said they mailed my test results out, but could remail them if they never arrived. So we had them sent to Yoshie's place and they arrived just last week.

I didn't do as well as I would have liked, but I passed, and now I am officially JLPT N2, which I'm sure is more useful in terms of being able to put it on my resume than anything else. Now I must continue to battle to keep my Japanese up! Well, no other way than using it as much as I can...

I'm going to take this opportunity to transition into poop. Yup. I noticed today that Yahoo! Japan has an article up about pandas; specifically why they have the bowels of a carnivore yet 99% of their diet is bamboo and bamboo grass.

Aren't you glad I didn't go with a picture of poo?

Now I'm not a huge panda guy (nor dolphins nor penguins; so sorry) but this did pique my interest, so I had a look. And I'm glad I did. Not because I found out why they don't eat meat (ultimately the article says they don't know why), but because I got to see the kanji for feces, which I don't see all that often. It kind of strikes me as one of those kanji you and your buddies might try to learn as a freshman in college studying the language, because wouldn't it be funny to know the kanji for "shit."

As you may be aware, くそ is an oft-used expletive that's comparable to "crap," "shit," or "damn" in English. The more clinical ふん, "excrement" or "droppings," shares the same kanji:

糞 (くそ,ふん)

Apparently this is also the kanji for King Richard III? I guess because "third" rhymes with "turd?" Anyway, yes...the kanji for poop. Another grand offering to my readers.