Well, if you fail it the first time, you get a bad end to add to your collection, and then you know to memorize it the 2nd time.
@Pringles: I should hope so! I got my bachelor's degree in Japanese, and lived there for about a year. My listening and speaking skills are pretty good, but my reading and writing has gotten really bad recently. I'm hoping to be able to go back and get another job there this year. The company I joined when I graduated (2007) went bankrupt 3 months after I got there.
I was a study abroad student in Sapporo for about 9 months and I had that job in Gunma prefecture for about 3 months.