The only thing obscure about N1 is some of the grammar points. The rest is pretty standard content if you want to be able to follow news or equivalent content without much trouble.
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I’m with Leebo here. N1 is definitely a valid test and needed if you truly want to consider yourself having mastered the language at any point. Passing N1 doesn’t mean you have mastered the language - but if someone says they have mastered the language, but can’t pass N1, I wouldn’t believe them. It’s not otherworldly difficult. It is difficult but definitely passable.
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The guy who runs JNovel Club was saying he couldn’t pass the JLPT1 without serious studying due to obscure kanji readings and grammar points and he’s lived in Japan for ages and worked as a professional translator for decades. He says many companies wouldn’t require a 1 to get a job as a translator. But honestly I’m so far below 1 I have no opinion and am just repeating what I heard
Yeah, that’s silly. There’s only like 7 questions in the kanji section. And when I took it all of them were items that appear before level 50 here. The standard for kanji on the test is the joyo kanji and their readings, i.e. the kanji and readings that Japanese students are required to learn by the end of 9th grade. Nothing that could count as obscure.
The test does take dedicated study to pass, but it’s really only the grammar that you have to go out of your way on, because some of it you’re very unlikely to encounter organically. The rest you can pick up by consuming high level content which you’d think a translator would be doing.
There are plenty of tests you can take that are harder than N1 as well.
Rereading your post though, did the guy actually say he failed it, or was he just saying he wouldn’t bother doing the studying because he doesn’t need the certification.
I wonder if @TheGreenDeath isn’t confusing the JLPT (N)1 and the kanken 1?
Because I can totally get a professional translator being unable to pass the kanken 1; most Japanese can’t.
They probably wouldn’t have mentioned grammar in that case.
I can’t wait to be done with N1 so I can get back to Kanken.
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I mean, maybe the person they were talking to mentioned the kanken 1, but they wrongly thought about the JLPT? It’s easy for the brain to fill in missing details it is expecting to see, which is why they think the conversation also mentioned grammar (but actually didn’t) 
Just a guess, though.
True, it’s not impossible.
Do you have any blogs you would recommend? I’m trying to transition into novel reading, but I’m still really slow, so I would love something slightly easier to read.
I don’t really expect your interests to match mine, so it’s hard to do a direct recommendation.
However, I have found a bunch of interesting stuff on Ameba (ameblo.jp), a blog hosting portal with search by topic and popularity ranking. There’s pretty much everything in there.
That’s how I started with reading blogs anyway. Over time, I found other stuff that matched my interests by following links from one blog to another 
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Thank you! The site sound like exactly what I’m looking for!
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I live in Japan too and when I know someone doesnt speak English well I talk slower and if needed use simpler words. Then when I speak to a Japanese person who knows I dont speak Japanese well they speak fluent fast speed and im like !?!?!?! Then when I dont understand they often kind of freak out and think they have to English. Its very frustrating. Also yes with fudging the speaking. I can form sentences in my head and while im practicing well, but in actual conversation my brain checks out. Very frustrating indeed.
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Kinda off-topic but are there any Kanken books you’d recommend?
I use the ステップ books, which are official.
This is normal initially. Get more exposure with listening. Far easier to do this with listening than speaking btw.
Cool thanks! I’ll try to poke around there and find what level I’m at. Tbh I don’t really plan on taking the Kanken but I’d like the practice anyways.
Cool. I also use the DS games, but I gave kind of a scathing review of the character input in the games in my Kanken thread. I cooled down a bit after playing more, but it’s still extremely frustrating. The worst problems only happen about 1% of the time, but I’ve had times where I physically couldn’t get it to register the correct kanji on a mock test so I was forced to answer incorrectly. That just shouldn’t happen.
Oh nice! I didn’t even know there was a Kanken thread. Will go through it later, thanks.
Shame about the game. Wonder if they came out with any 3DS ones with better input?
I have two ‘parallel text’ short story collections, where you get a Japanese short story on the right page and the English translation on the left page. Published by Kodansha and New Penguin, they each hold 8 stories by different Japanese authors (both feature Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto). They are arranged in ascending order of difficulty with very little furigana. At my current level I can pretty much only read the first story in either (Murakami). But I look forward to being able to read all of them in a couple of years!
I have and second those books :)! I’m going through ボウリングピンの立つ所 from the New Penguin book now.
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