I believe that if you want to accomplish some long term goal, it helps to have concrete goals. In my particular case, it helps a lot if the progress towards these goals can be measured in a numerical way. One particular long term goal of mine is to learn Japanese. More specifically, I want to be able to play Japanese video games and watch Japanese anime. Now I have a concrete goal: The JLPT.

JLPT stands for Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and is called 日本語能力試験 in Japanese. It's a standardized test to measure your proficiency in language, like the English section of America's SAT, I suppose, except that JLPT is specifically designed to measure the Japanese of non-native speakers. The test has four levels, with 4 being the easiest and 1 being the most prestigious. If you pass level 1, you're considered to be able to speak Japanese at the level of a highschool graduate, and Japanese universities frequently require you to be at level 1.

The tests are standardized in that there is a set of 100 kanjis you must know to pass the level 4 test, 300 for the level 3 test, 1000 for the level 2 test, and 2000 for the level 4 test.

I'm going for level 4. In case it isn't clear, yes, after being certified level 4, you can study further, than then re-take the test at level 3 and so on. It costs about $50 each time you want to take the test. I'm cheap though, so I'm not going to actually take the test. Rather, I shall be using free online tools that are supposed to help you pass the test, study them all, and once I'm confident I know the 100 kanjis I'm supposed to know, I'll just declare myself to have "unofficially passed" the level 4 test. Perhaps once I'm ready, I'll actually take the level 1 test and get certified. Perhaps I won't really care about getting certified enough, the satisfaction of being able to enjoy games and anime being sufficient for me.