moose_grunt
Contributor
I have seen several posts asking questions and stuff about the sensuishi, but haven't actually seen anyone do a writeup about it. I took it this weekend, so I thought I would share my knowledge and experiences concerning it. My disclaimer is that I am not versed in law, especially Japanese law, nor am I fluent in Japanese (especially that of law), so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
The sensuishi is a test created by the Ministry of Labor and Welfare (or some body that includes Labor in the name...). It is a written knowledge test, and passing it gets you a sensuishi license, which is required of "anyone who works in the water, breathing compressed air either from a tank or from a surface supplied compressor." This is mainly aimed at commercial divers (salvage, boat repair, fisheries, etc), but also includes scuba instructors and divemasters. If I remember correctly, the penalty for working without one (and getting caught) is something like 6 months penal servitude and up to 500,000 yen. The impression I got from asking around, however, is that the only time that question will come up is if you have some sort of major accident (the death of a customer was hinted at).
It is administered 4 times a year at the big regional offices, but there just happened to be a local offering in my prefecture's capitol, which wasn't listed on the exam.or.jp's website--my LDS told me about it, and helped me with the application.
According to law, the test will cover the following 4 subjects:
-underwater work
-supplied air, ascents and descents
-high pressure related injuries
-related laws
The test is only available in Japanese. It is multiple guess, mostly of the format "out of these five, which is incorrect?" with a smattering of "which is correct" and "choose the answer which fills in the blanks properly". It is broken into a morning section and an afternoon section, with 2 hours each to complete 20 problems. Time is not an issue. To pass, you have to make 60% or higher on the entire test, and 40% or higher on each of the individual sections.
There is a textbook (the sensuishi text (tekisuto)) as well as a practice problem book (sensuishi shiken mondaishuu) that are published yearly. The textbook is pretty in depth, covering diving physics, physiology, various diving systems (helmet, hookah, scuba, etc), pressure related injuries, recompression chambers, and related laws. Some information I felt was slightly outdated, in terms of current scuba standards, but that reflects Japanese law and the fact that everything is aimed at commercial divers who have recompression chambers. For example, you are required by law to carry a cutting tool with you, but you are NOT required to have a SPG (in scuba). There are also some things which surprised me--they cover PFO's! A lot of it is directly ripped off from the USN dive manual.
The problems workbook is exactly that--100 problems taken from previous tests, with detailed explanations about why the correct answer is correct, and why the incorrect answers are incorrect. I did notice some discrepancies between the textbook and problems workbook, though. Some of the questions that came out in previous texts were not covered in the textbook (pascal's theory of hydraulic pressure), and in some cases they contradicted each other (the proper rate to pressurize a recompression chamber).
Overall, I found the textbook and problems workbook to be very helpful. Even though they say they don't do it, a lot of problems are rehashed and reused on future tests. To this number, I also found the following site: Kamar Kecil di OnEcoTravel: ???????????
which has previous tests, along with the correct answers. Between reading both of the books, and taking several of the previous tests, I feel very confident about my performance on the test.
As to the Japanese, it sucks. As I said before, I am not fluent, but I have no problems with ordinary conversations. The language used in the books and test is formal written Japanese, with plenty of difficult kanji used. The up side to it, is that being formal, most of it is pretty clearly written (none of the double and triple negatives followed by a reversal conjunction). Also being formal, they tend to use the same phrases over and over, so the amount of actual grammar that you need to learn is greatly reduced. The vocab as well is complicated, but it is also repeated.
In total, I had 5 weeks to study for the test. I studied for a couple of hours each day, and made flashcards for the vocab that I didn't know. I think I had 100~200 flashcards, which isn't difficult to learn in 5 weeks. The vocab was also made much simpler in that I was only trying to learn Japanese -> English meaning. I didn't concern myself with the readings of the kanji, or reversing it to English -> Japanese.
The content of the test wasn't very difficult. Anyone who would actually take the test--divemaster or instructor--should already know most of the material in their native language. Thus, you're not learning a completely new subject in a foreign tongue, you're just learning what words in Japanese match the things you already know. The only part I had difficulty with were the sections on helmet diving, and related laws. Both, however, seemed to have only about 10~20 questions that seem to keep resurfacing, so if you take enough practice tests and read the problems workbook, you can learn the proper answers without really knowing what they mean!
. I also think that reading the USN dive manual would have helped greatly in the helmet area, since I didn't really know anything about it in my own language, so it made learning it in Japanese more difficult.
I believe that the test is doable for anyone with a good grasp of what they're doing scuba-wise, a halfway decent command of Japanese, and the will to study. The passing grade is only 60%, so that is a pretty low standard to have to aim for.
If anyone has any corrections, comments to add, or questions, fire away!
--Jimmy
The sensuishi is a test created by the Ministry of Labor and Welfare (or some body that includes Labor in the name...). It is a written knowledge test, and passing it gets you a sensuishi license, which is required of "anyone who works in the water, breathing compressed air either from a tank or from a surface supplied compressor." This is mainly aimed at commercial divers (salvage, boat repair, fisheries, etc), but also includes scuba instructors and divemasters. If I remember correctly, the penalty for working without one (and getting caught) is something like 6 months penal servitude and up to 500,000 yen. The impression I got from asking around, however, is that the only time that question will come up is if you have some sort of major accident (the death of a customer was hinted at).
It is administered 4 times a year at the big regional offices, but there just happened to be a local offering in my prefecture's capitol, which wasn't listed on the exam.or.jp's website--my LDS told me about it, and helped me with the application.
According to law, the test will cover the following 4 subjects:
-underwater work
-supplied air, ascents and descents
-high pressure related injuries
-related laws
The test is only available in Japanese. It is multiple guess, mostly of the format "out of these five, which is incorrect?" with a smattering of "which is correct" and "choose the answer which fills in the blanks properly". It is broken into a morning section and an afternoon section, with 2 hours each to complete 20 problems. Time is not an issue. To pass, you have to make 60% or higher on the entire test, and 40% or higher on each of the individual sections.
There is a textbook (the sensuishi text (tekisuto)) as well as a practice problem book (sensuishi shiken mondaishuu) that are published yearly. The textbook is pretty in depth, covering diving physics, physiology, various diving systems (helmet, hookah, scuba, etc), pressure related injuries, recompression chambers, and related laws. Some information I felt was slightly outdated, in terms of current scuba standards, but that reflects Japanese law and the fact that everything is aimed at commercial divers who have recompression chambers. For example, you are required by law to carry a cutting tool with you, but you are NOT required to have a SPG (in scuba). There are also some things which surprised me--they cover PFO's! A lot of it is directly ripped off from the USN dive manual.
The problems workbook is exactly that--100 problems taken from previous tests, with detailed explanations about why the correct answer is correct, and why the incorrect answers are incorrect. I did notice some discrepancies between the textbook and problems workbook, though. Some of the questions that came out in previous texts were not covered in the textbook (pascal's theory of hydraulic pressure), and in some cases they contradicted each other (the proper rate to pressurize a recompression chamber).
Overall, I found the textbook and problems workbook to be very helpful. Even though they say they don't do it, a lot of problems are rehashed and reused on future tests. To this number, I also found the following site: Kamar Kecil di OnEcoTravel: ???????????
which has previous tests, along with the correct answers. Between reading both of the books, and taking several of the previous tests, I feel very confident about my performance on the test.
As to the Japanese, it sucks. As I said before, I am not fluent, but I have no problems with ordinary conversations. The language used in the books and test is formal written Japanese, with plenty of difficult kanji used. The up side to it, is that being formal, most of it is pretty clearly written (none of the double and triple negatives followed by a reversal conjunction). Also being formal, they tend to use the same phrases over and over, so the amount of actual grammar that you need to learn is greatly reduced. The vocab as well is complicated, but it is also repeated.
In total, I had 5 weeks to study for the test. I studied for a couple of hours each day, and made flashcards for the vocab that I didn't know. I think I had 100~200 flashcards, which isn't difficult to learn in 5 weeks. The vocab was also made much simpler in that I was only trying to learn Japanese -> English meaning. I didn't concern myself with the readings of the kanji, or reversing it to English -> Japanese.
The content of the test wasn't very difficult. Anyone who would actually take the test--divemaster or instructor--should already know most of the material in their native language. Thus, you're not learning a completely new subject in a foreign tongue, you're just learning what words in Japanese match the things you already know. The only part I had difficulty with were the sections on helmet diving, and related laws. Both, however, seemed to have only about 10~20 questions that seem to keep resurfacing, so if you take enough practice tests and read the problems workbook, you can learn the proper answers without really knowing what they mean!
. I also think that reading the USN dive manual would have helped greatly in the helmet area, since I didn't really know anything about it in my own language, so it made learning it in Japanese more difficult.I believe that the test is doable for anyone with a good grasp of what they're doing scuba-wise, a halfway decent command of Japanese, and the will to study. The passing grade is only 60%, so that is a pretty low standard to have to aim for.
If anyone has any corrections, comments to add, or questions, fire away!
--Jimmy
