Well I have not completely ruled the listening books out yet. If I do feel I really need them, I will get them. For now as you said, I plan to consume as much native material as possible.
Edit: Any particular native material you recommend?
Yeah, it’s like two separate things… the books will not help if you don’t yet have your listening ability honed to the appropriate level. They don’t purport to do that for you. Like, to make an extreme example, you couldn’t just get an N1 listening book and expect to be able to practice to N1 listening level with just that. It’s certainly different from the other areas of study.
Well, as I said, “interesting and comprehensible to you” are the important things. For me, that means quiz shows in Japan, that are like the equivalent of Jeopardy and whatnot… so they might be both uninteresting and incomprehensible to you.
It takes some work to find the right thing for each person.
Lots of people here like anime and whatnot, dramas and such.
To add to what @Leebo said, you could check what is trending on the Japanese YouTube.
I technically didn’t like most of the stuff on that list, but why not.
I am watching a ton of 実況プレイ(let’s play) instead. (Well, I think some of the most popular let’s player do make the list, though).
Once you start watching stuff you like, YouTube’s recommendations get pretty good.
Great topic, wasn’t sure myself on the nuances after reading your question. These links were helpful for me. Basic/intermed Dictionary of Japanese Grammar probably has a great explanation but I haven’t checked yet:
うちに：Express an event in which speaker will do an action (by willpower) before the situation changes.
あいだ：Express an action, event or situation which is/was going on while another action/event is/was also happening at the same time
あいだに：Describe a situation which is going on, then an action or event happens
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Just to follow up, in DBJG pg. 515 there are few more points to distinguish.
Re. aida, per DBJG (p. 70 in my book?)
aida ni: one event (kids out playing) falls sometime within the other event (mother napping), but not the exact span of time.
aida: the two events (kids watching tv and mother napping) occupy the same length of time.
Hope that helps (and that I remember it myself now after looking it up!)
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Planning on taking N3 in December, too! At the moment I am WK-ing, watching 15mins of Japanese TV every evening, listening to NHK radio at work and reading NHK easy news. Still a bit unsure about how to tackle Grammar. I guess it will be a case of sitting down at it regularly… how to best fit that into an everyday routine? Hm…
Ordered the SKM books. Should reach in 10 days. Meanwhile going through Nihongonomori videos and WK.
Online registration starts from 1st Aug here. Funny that we have to register before we get the results from the previous JLPT. Imagine going for a higher level while failing the previous level.
I was reading about some N3 grammar points with different meanings tahn what I’d seen previously and while I understand the new meanings in context, I’m not sure if I won’t be tricked if I see them appear somewhere.
Can anyone explain how to distinguish when に対して is being used to mean “towards” instead of “as opposed to”?
Or when ため is being used to indicate because instead of for or in order to?
Is it just a matter of figuring it out from context?
I’m pretty sure for ため、for it to take more of a “because of” meaning, what comes before it should be in the past tense.
In other news, I plan on signing up for N3 this year myself. I’ve got very mixed feelings about it. I’ve only been studying for just under a year now (11 months exactly tomorrow wooo) Even though it’s only been a year, I’ve finished Genki 1 & 2, and just recently started Tobira. I don’t live in Japan yet (not that it should really matter I suppose) but I chat with a native Japanese almost everyday, and we make an extra effort with new grammar.
I feel like I could pass N4 with 98% certainty. N3 however, I’ve got like 65% certainty/confidence. I like a challenge, but this is the only chance I have at taking the JLPT before I move to Japan in January. N4 & N3 are both useless, but I really have a fetish for the idea of passing N3 in little over a year’s worth of study. It keeps me diligent
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I’m about halfway through Try! N3 grammar but have also studied N3 grammar points through other sources. I have Sou Matome for reading and various sources for listening. I don’t live in Japan either but I do think contact with native Japanese has helped me improve a lot in the past. (It’s something I should really do more of these days.) Well, my sprint begins now. I figure if I can put in an hour or two every night after work into the textbooks, I’ll have a decent chance. 頑張りましょう！
Yep. Im doing that too!
I was also planning to take the N3 this december but I was discouraged to do it since I started doing the sou matome n3 
I thing I prefer doing it after I’m confortable doing the sou matome, I’m struggling with reading and a bit of kanji.
If anyone can share their experience with the N3 it would be cool. 
After getting through the first chapter of sou matome reading, I’m finding it’s not too bad to comprehend. My main concern is faced with a page of text and some questions, will I be able to read it fast enough to get the required information in the time allowed?
Also working through half a chapter of Try! N3 every night and doing a little listening practice each day.
Once I’ve completed all the grammar exercises in the Try! book, I’ll ramp up on the listening and revise grammar as much as possible.
Anyone else taking N3 in December? If so, what’s your daily routine?
This is why I always time myself when I do reading comprehension questions. Obviously I still try to get the right answer, but the timer keeps me focused, and I can see my improvement over time.
If you have to read a page of text, whether it’s a flyer or a sign or some other instructions and then have to answer 3 or so questions about it, how much time do you allow yourself?
I guess I’ll have to take a look at some N3 practice exams to see how many of these “pages” to expect in the test.
That is the exact reason why I failed my N3 attempt this year. I was really confident in my reading skills but it turned out to be my worst section. Learning from that experience I am going to learn vocabulary, kanji and read a lot of articles in Japanese. I have a bad habit of slow analysis of every bit of info I read, and because of that I had to randomly choose answers in half of my N3 reading questions. Read fast and with confidence or you will fail. Reading section is designed to test your reading speed. Test had 19 pages of texts and questions, I was a bit overwhelmed by that fact.
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For passages, I shoot for about 2 minutes per quarter-page.
That’s not exceptionally fast, but it gets the job done.
For a flyer or email or something, you have to read the questions and find out what they want to know so you don’t waste time reading everything. When I took N2, the flyer question involved reading like 2 sentences to get the right answer, 95% of the page was superfluous.
Some people advocate reading the questions first for passages as well, but I just find that to be distracting.
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@Leebo Thanks, that’s good to know and I’d always wondered about the strategies to approach formidable blocks of text.
That’s a lot of reading.
I’m probably too slow at the moment. I’m going to have to lift my speed without rushing so much it becomes incomprehensible. (Probably not an easy balancing act.)
The hardest thing for me was just getting over the fact that I can’t pronounce a word. It’s so utterly meaningless on a reading comprehension test, whether you can say the word out loud or not. But before I started “training” specifically for reading comprehension, I would always stop at words I didn’t know the reading of.
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