The passage about the boy who couldn’t remember names was on the N3 so no worries!
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That was on the N3.
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Oh sorry! Didn’t see your reply!
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I took the N5 in Paris yesterday.
I was working in the morning on a planned maintenance which took longer than expected so I had to leave the colleagues to go to the test. I drove for 1 hour and arrived 15/20 minutes before the start. Not in a hurry but not completeky at ease too.
As a result I didn’t have time for last minute reviewing but also I didn’t had time to think too much about the oncoming test.
I’m reasonably confident that I’ll pass.
What I absolutely need to improve is my reading speed because I only answered 28 of 35 questions in the first part and 24 of 32 questions in the second.
Also I choose to not randomly fill the answers for questions I didn’t have time to read. The test is only for my personnal interest and I don’t want to pass by luck.
For the vocabulary part I think I got almost all my answers correct but for the grammar I’m far from sure.
They gave us a warning 4 minutes before the end of each part. For the vocabulary my mistake was I miscalculated the end time (I counted 30 minutes instead of 25 on my watch) and for the grammar I spent way too much time on the word reordering. Each time I heard the 4 minutes left I skipped the section where I was to go straight to the end and managed to answer 3 or 4 questions rather quickly (4 minutes don’t last long).
I had a moment of doubt for the listening part. To check if everyone can hear properly a sample sentence is spoken and they ask if everyone is ok. At that point I thought to myself ‘OK I could clearly hear it but I didn’t understand a single word’ 
In the end it didn’t go as bad as I thought. Some questions were very easy and I least I had time to answer all the questions haha. My issue is that I somewhat forget the beginning of a sentence when I reach the end. There was only 2 questions were I randomly answered. One was about a stundent wishing happy birthday to his teacher and the teacher saying that it was before but I didn’t get the begining when they say what day it is and I can’t remember the other.
Overall it was a good experience. After the test I heard some N2 saying that there were some issues during their audio test and 4 or 5 questions needed to be replayed because the audio failed.
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I took the N5. About ten(?) Years ago before there was a N5 I took the N4 after completing my 2 year college course.
That time I passed everything but the listening. Which basically the only person if heard speak Japanese regularly was my sensei so I just sort of filled in bubbles and silently mourned for the whole section.
So life happened and I got back into Japanese recently. I decided I’d try again because my pride was seriously wounded and I haven’t forgotten!
I previously took the test in LA, and I took it in Chicago this time. It felt more relaxed, but I think it’s just because I knew how serious everyone is this time around.
We did have a clock on the wall and I was sooo lucky to get a seat next to the boombox. That probably helped.
I haven’t had offical classes in Japanese in over.10 years.
Vocab no problems at all.
Grammar/reading I just felt the worst about, it just was clunky to me. I did okay on the practice tests, it was my worst section likely because it’s what I studied the least. I had time left over to review on both grammar and vocab sections.
The stupid sentence scrambles are the bane of my existence and didn’t exist the last time I took the exam. I didn’t feel confident about any of them.
The listening section I studied the hell out of. I actually think I did pretty good. I studied extensively for it. I was surprised by the appropriate phrase questions and I thought it should be easy but that section was also not on the n4 when I took it so I just felt unprepared . I don’t think I did terrible on it though.
Overall, I think I passed. If I failed is going to be by a point or two. Next year regardless I’ll take the N4.
@Ninkastmin Hey amigo, did you write the N3 as planned? What was your experience?
The easiest question for me was in the sentence unscrambling part: つくえの _____ ______ ______ ______ あります。 (ペン に うえ が)
Until I realized that that was just an example, and so I had to use my eraser. 
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Oh god I did this too and I was excited that it was going to be easier than expected then… NOPE.
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Same boat and sentiments on N4, I will move forward to N3 no matter what. Listening always kills me even though I did well on the other sections. For me it’s easy space-out due to the frustration of not catching the previous question for listening.
There were so many sound distractions in my room; people coming late, constant knuckle crackings, fidget tapping, a nice loud snort of mucus every 30 seconds…arrgh
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I’d be curious to see how WK usage in the few days/weeks pre- and post-JLPT exam (in December and July) relate to usage rates more broadly. Does anybody have this info? Can anybody get this info?
I ask because I’ve seen many people on these forums that are quite savvy with tech and that are much more keen on statistics than I am.
P.S. hope it went well for everyone!
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For me, my wanikani usage dropped, I was to busy studing the other parts. But it doesn’t take very long at wanikani to hit all the jlpt 5 kanji.
Now I have a huge backlog to tackle .
Couldn’t agree with you more (took N4 too). Makes you wonder how you should practice listening to be best prepepared for the test. The listening exercises in my preperation books were much easier. It would be really annoying to fail the whole test, just because you didn’t get those 19 points in listening…
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Is it just me or are the examples always much simpler than the real test 
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Shouldn’t they always be that way? The purpose is to make sure you know how to do that type of question.
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I took the N3 test, but went in knowing I was under prepared (happens sometimes when you can only take a test twice a year and you are right in between levels).
I have to admit I semi-cheated on the listening part. Honestly, I was lost in many of the conversations, so it came down to guessing. The guy left of the center in front of me was super enthusiastic - getting in the ready to answer mode with his body language - when he heard the answer announced that he thought was correct. Often I just chose the box when he seemed to be happy hearing something.
I know, quite lame, and I won’t come back here all happy when it helped me pass. Even if I pass, I will study for N3 in July again.
Does anyone know if you can retake the same level if you have passed it already?
@Leebo What do you think about the listening section of the N1? How close is it to native level? It felt a bit fast for me, but not terribly so. It was actually refreshing that it felt fast, for once.
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Hm, that does make sense. It is just so frustrating when you can easily answer the example, and then have no clue for the next three questions…
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I took the N4 yesterday! It was my first JLPT. It was basically just as difficult as I expected it to be – but like a lot of people the listening section was by far the hardest. If I don’t pass it will definitely be due to that section.
Yeah, I took it at MIT in Boston, and not only was I surprised at how lenient the proctors were, but I was dumbfounded at how unprepared many of the people taking the test were. Multiple people forgot to bring pencils! And the proctors had a bunch of extras that they were just handing out. (and there I was, worried that because I didn’t bring an eraser separate from my actual pencils that I might not be allowed in ).
They also had a timeanddate.com clock projected for everyone to see.
By the way, does anybody happen to know the exact date at which we can see the results online ?
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I got lucky, I sat on the second row in the middle but the person to my front, to my right side and behind me were all absent so I had SPACE.
Also the person to my left was a lefty so the desks for switched and it was less crowded that way too!
My proctors were really relaxed . I’m not sure if is because the N5 level is what it is and it’s not like I can get a job with it or anything, or if all of the exams went the same way.
The Proctor did call out 5 minutes 5 minutes early (there were 10 minutes left) once and there was a collective sigh of relief when she corrected herself.
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I took the N4 yesterday! It was my first JLPT. It was basically just as difficult as I expected it to be – but like a lot of people the listening section was by far the hardest. If I don’t pass it will definitely be due to that section.
Yeah, I took it at MIT in Boston, and not only was I surprised at how lenient the proctors were, but I was dumbfounded at how unprepared many of the people taking the test were. Multiple people forgot to bring pencils ! And the proctors had a bunch of extras that they were just handing out. (and there I was, worried that because I didn’t bring an eraser separate from my actual pencils that I might not be allowed in
They also had a timeanddate.com clock projected for everyone to see.
Hey, I took the JLPT at MIT yesterday too. 
I took the N5 and I agree that the listening section was by far the hardest, but my friend who took the N2 felt like listening was way easier than the reading section, which they don’t give enough time for. Apparently they also didn’t have the timeanddate.com projected in that room so it must’ve varied by proctor. 
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