Thanks! 
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Failed N2. I got 25/60 on the reading part. Any tips?
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I know this probably sounds self evident/tautological but read more. Find something that you like reading and read 30 minutes a night or something. Also learn some of the words you keep running into in your reading. As a side benefit, it can be a lot of fun. Good luck! 
(Source: I stunk at reading and then read a bunch for a while, and the reading on this N1 thing seemed like the easiest part for me so far.)
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Ah, thanks. I’ve always hated reading but I guess there is no other way.
Thanks to the reading groups, I’ve been reading for fun. I read Convenience Store Woman and the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi light novels. I’m also on book 12 of Kimetsu no Yaiba manga.
Hopefully I would have read enough to get a better score on the next test. I just hate testing because I usually skip grammar I don’t know and read on.
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I agree 100% with TamanegiNoKame. I don’t think there is any way around actual reading of real Japanese in order to improve your skill. It is hard in the beginning, though. The first book I read cover to cover was Convenience Store Woman. It was a frustrating experience; I had to look up multiple words per page. But I’ve read four more since then, and each book becomes easier to read compared to the previous one. I also had a relatively easy time on the reading section of this N1 test, and it’s all because of the daily reading of books, articles, blogs etc. I did during the last several months.
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I can only imagine how much harder N1 is compared to N2.
I guess more shorter paragraphs like articles would work with me.
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So it appears that the Google translate issue was the likely cause of the question scrambling after all. I’ve added a note to the OP. Do not apply Google translate to the actual test page (the rest of the website is fine though, but don’t set it to auto-translate). I don’t know how or why this happens but it seems to be the consistent factor. If you had problems with the questions coming out all garbled and odd, give that a try.
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Since the test still is available I figured I’d give the listening another try to see if it would work better now. I just instantly submitted the first two sections so I could do the listening one only, and got this result:
So while I don’t know if it’s exactly the same score I would have gotten if I could have done the listening on the same day as the rest of the test, I figure it’s probably a decent approximation to say that my “actual” total score should be about 35 + 47 + 43 = 125, which confirms what I thought when I made my previous post 
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I… passed? 
I honestly didn’t expect that, I didn’t even recognise about 30% of the words (again, I need to study more vocab, but I know that already, so yay /o/). I just have to continue working like I already do to pass it for real in December 
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Flamy passing N1 with 1 year and 7 months of studying - LEGEND 
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This went surprisingly well, so I’d have loved to try N2 next, but the deadline is coming up, so I don’t think I’ll get to… I underestimated how much 2 hours of test-taking would fry my brain, and I definitely couldn’t do two of these in a day.
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Huh…Not nearly as bad as I expected actually…And considering my brain fizzled out about 3 passages into the reading and I spent the remaining hour and a half questioning if I should just stop…Huh, maybe I actually have a shot at passing in December when I’m taking a test in a test-like environment and not at 1 AM and also have an additional 5 months of study time…
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In my case words written in kana were not the problem. I’m kind of used to it already, but I probably didn’t understand some of the questions. I should probably get one of the JLPT preparation books.
Me too! Oh wait, I bought one and read 2 pages… where is it again?
Five and a half hours left! Go go go!
My brain was too fried to try N4, but this was fun! It’s crazy how much I have forgotten/remember since getting my Japanese minor three years ago (and doing no grammar study in that time).
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Wow I passed N4! I did both N5 & N4 to see how I would go, and honestly the hardest thing for me was understanding the words when in hiragana. I still have plenty of study to do but I feel like I’m making progress and I really could attempt N3 in December.
How similar are these tests to the real one? Obviously it’s not online, but in terms of the questions and answers?
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Listening went much better than I thought it was going. I kept getting bored and distracted. Grammar went…as expected. 
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Same. It somehow only allowed me to keep going on the time I had left from the written part, then forcefully kicked me out even though I still had time left (cf on the right). So annoying.
Well, the good thing is that I completely rushed during the written part, so I had time to do more than half the listening, but still…
Oh well, I’m still happy with the result.
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The Language knowledge/Grammar/Reading section are combined into one 110 minute long section. Only listening is separate.
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