合格!
I’m a bit surprised my listening is higher than reading, but overall I’m satisfied with the results, congratulations to all those who passed!
I have also already registered to December’s N2, so no time to rest, 頑張りましょう！
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Thanks! It was my first take of N1, and second JLPT exam after the N2 I took last December. I took both after reaching level 60 on Wanikani, but I don’t think the kanji section was very hard compared to the rest of the test.
Unfortunately I’m probably not a good source when it comes to advice for the exam because other than practice tests I didn’t do any specific studies, but starting reading in the 40ish level range definitely helped a lot. If I had done my due diligence with financial/business/political articles, some of the vocab and listening sections may have gone better.
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May I ask what kind of materials do you read?(novels?magazines?Newspapers?). I have been reading too, but mostly technical books and although I can understand them, I have a hard time understanding some of the words that appear in the reading sections of the JLPT. Your reading score is perfect so I might get a good chance if I mine the same type of reading materials for vocabulary. I did a lot of those JLPT practice books, and apps, and even though I got good scores in them almost none of the words I studied appeared. 
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Failed N2
64/180
Hilariously got 67/180 the first time i took it in 2022
Sigh
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Bit lengthy explanation of reading material
I started reading using web novels from https://syosetu.com/. The pros are that there are lots of free and popular web novels and many are light and easy to read. The cons are that these are basically the rough drafts of light novels and therefore can be very very unpolished. Ultimately the reason I stopped reading them is because I wanted to read literature that has been more refined.
From here all of my reading history can be found in the Natively link on my profile. I dipped my toes in novels with a mystery novel called GOTH, which was interesting enough and had around 1-2 unfamiliar words per page for me to learn.
After that by chance I picked up a book that ended up being a dive into the deep end: Haruki Ryu’s Coin Locker Babies. It had surrealism cranked up to the max, with incredibly vivid descriptions (heavy TWs for violence, lack of consent, etc) and next to no furigana to boot. It was extremely difficult to get through and I’m sure I missed a lot of meaning, but it was ultimately the turning point that got me into reading seriously.
The next 13 books I read from the start of the year to the exam were all part of a list of “masterpiece” novels and short story collections. I think they are all worth reading, but to be honest if your goal is studying for the N1, they’re not the most efficient way to do it. Most of the JLPT readings are short excerpts that are quite different from modern Japanese literature.
One thing that the novels did prepare me for was trying to find threads of meaning in a sea of unfamiliar content. Even if it’s impossible to have complete understanding, you can use kanji like how wayfarers used stars to guide them. I certainly didn’t prepare by reading any materials about the mutations of beetles, but when I saw 突然変異 and the surrounding context, I could understand the gist of what the article was talking about.
Basically, if you want the most relevant material to mine for the N1, I would much sooner recommend stuff like NHK articles than modern Japanese novels because they use varied vocabulary and topics and are of more comparable length to JLPT exam passages. However, no reading is wasted time because the reading section tests your reading speed and how you can adapt to unfamiliar topics.
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I passed N4! Honestly, I felt like I’d done so bad at listening I was genuinely not expecting that, super happy 
On to N3 next summer!
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passed n2! 
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Yes, I definitely agree with this. The reading pieces on the exam are generally the “non fiction essay” kind of category, so a bit of experience with that helps. But to pass N1 you really need to be just generally comfortable with reading at a decent pace and at comprehending content without doing vocabulary lookups, even if you don’t know every word. For that any reading will do, and reading the stuff you want to read is more motivational than ploughing through texts that are closer to JLPT content but which you find dull.
I did a lot of fiction reading but also went through one of those “core10k” anki decks before doing N1 – the core decks are based on newspaper word frequency so tend to have the kind of N1 vocab in them. My personal take is that reading speed and fluency is more important than raw vocabulary though – you can make up for a slightly deficient vocab score elsewhere in the test.
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N2 Passed! 
And wouldn’t you know it, one of the kanji in a question I knew I got wrong on the test came up for review today. Just goes to show you’re never done learning 
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My score is abysmal, but I’m so relieved I passed! Even though it is so close to failure, I still think that I deserved this 合格. I’m a bit surprised with my low listening score though, it didn’t feel that tough 
The rest is exactly as I expected.
And the good thing is that I need to improve in the areas that can be achieved by reading/watching a lot, which is exactly why I’m learning Japanese in the first place.
Considering my score, I doubt that I’ll be able to pass N1 next year, maybe it’ll make more sense to redo N2, but we’ll see.
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After narrowly not passing N2 twice, I passed N3 now, nice to finally have one JLPT under my belt 
Now onwards to my original goal again, N2.
I’m a bit disappointed in my reading score, I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading and I thought I understood almost all of the exam text. Oh well, even more reading practice ahead, as always. Still need to improve my reading speed, that’s always my issue in N2, running out of time.
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Passed the N4 with 95/180 (had better scores practicing at home, I clearly didn’t vibe with the test environment), after failing it in 2022 on WK lvl60 - the 1 year break and reset at a slower speed was worth it 
Even though it’s an easy level, it’s nice to get validation of my self-study efforts, not having studied at a school or with a teacher 
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Just chiming in to say that I definitely agree with this. I think lots of people find the timing an issue, and there are lots of aspects of reading that are transferable to different genres (I think understanding non fiction if you are used to fiction is easier than vice versa due to the amount of descriptions in fiction). Overall reading ability is far more important than just focusing on the specific genres featured on the test (although doing past papers and reading similar content will certainly be of benefit), although probably if all of your reading were hyper-focused on a very specific niche of fiction, that could be detrimental.
I got almost full marks on 読解 when I took N1, but also ended up getting full marks on the 言語知識 and especially for 文字・語彙 I attribute this to having read a variety of books (and games etc.). I find that section to often have a semi random smattering of different words from different contexts, so really almost any book could happen to expose you to a piece of vocab that lets you pick up a few points. Not to mention absorbing kanji readings via relating to words you already know can allow one to make a good guess at a word’s reading even if they haven’t seen it before, so can be useful for the kanji questions, too.
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I’m inspired to study hard after seeing everyone’s results~
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Would it be possible to be ready for n2 by this december? After the July exam i kinda stopped studying and plan to restart this week.
I would also need to brush up on some n3 kanji and grammar points but i think i will be able to finish that by the end of this week.
Edit: I already applied for n2 lol but wanted to know if its actually possible.
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Depends quite a lot on how much time you have for studying. N2 is where the reading requirement really starts to kick in, and also the gaps between levels get bigger as you go up, so N2 is a bigger jump from N3 than N3 is from N4. The “grammar” part of N2 is feasible in that time, but I think the big challenge will be amassing the vocabulary and getting the reading practice in.
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700-800 hours by November 30 - good enough ?
Any recommendations for books? they dont need to be textbooks. I was reading tobira but it was kinda boring. Any free resources for reading?
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