不安も心配も増えているね。

本当, some of the best learning happens from songs. Was just doing an exercise about the stock market and trying to remember a word for increasing, and into my head popped the opening lines of a song 先生 turned me on to—井上陽水 INOUE Yousui, 傘がない "Kasa ga Nai" ("I Have No Umbrella")—

都会では自殺する若者が増えている
Tokai de ha jisatsu suru wakamono ga fueteiru
今朝来た新聞の片隅に書いていた
Kesa kita shinbun no katasumi ni kaiteita

Written in the corner of this morning's paper: the city's suicide rate is increasing. That's the word I wanted—増.える fueru, to increase.

Songs are great for sticking vocab and grammar into one's head. Must pursue more Japanese radio.

On a related note, or in related news—the time has come to register for the JLPT, yet again; for a few years, when I was pretty much taking no part in the outside world, I registered but didn't actually do it. So, the eternal question: which level? There are a thousand guides and advice threads about it, but it's a roll of the dice. I passed the former level 4, I think more than 10 years ago; now there are five levels, N1 being the toughest. I'm encouraged by the shockingly low minimal point totals needed to pass—even for N1, essentially the equivalent of fluency, in each of language, reading, and listening, a score of less than 33% (19/60) is enough to pass. Of course, not knowing one certain kanji, or using で rather than に, or getting bogged down in parsing a spoken year, can cost you the item. N5 probably wouldn't be much of an achievement; N4 wouldn't look like much progress over the old 4 I have; maybe N3 would be possible. Will have to consult the guides. I've broken out the 扉 textbook and my kanji flashcards and apps; maybe N3 isn't unreasonable, by December. I'll need to decide within the next few days.