Regardless of your performance on the individual tests, I’d say N4 to N2 in only five years is pretty impressive evidence of your hard work! Congratulations!
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That is discouraging, but don’t give up! All you need to do is to pump up that listening score.
If my experience is anything to go by, the best thing you can do is to watch Japanese movies, TV, and/or anime without subtitles. I know you probably think you won’t understand anything, but you will, and after doing it enough your brain will start to “expect” Japanese sounds and you’ll find yourself understanding more and more! (Of course, I don’t know your study routine… maybe you already do that.)
Conversely, I’ve found that if you watch Japanese media with subtitles, your brain totally blocks out the Japanese audio (even if you could have understood it if you paid it full attention). So DON’T do that.
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Are you in Japan? Even though my listening still sucks, it has helped so much to be around it all day erryday.
I also suck at self-study, which is what I have been doing (minus bugging my coworkers for help). A tutor would probably do you a world of good. Someone to help you focus on those weak points.
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That was me the first time I did N4.
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I want to accept your praise but I can’t!
I started studying in 2013. So in reality its taken me 9 years to go from zero to N2. I’ve been lazy, and I’ve only realistically consistently studied for about two years total within those nine years (studying for three months at a time, taking huge breaks, etc).
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I passed the N3 even though I had such short time to prepare for it! 
(2 Months)
I was around the N4 level when I started studying for the JLPT.
I’m so proud of myself for being able to succeed on it! I definitely also feel like my japanese improved a lot in this period!
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Wait, how is it that you are allowed to travel to Japan from the US?
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Damn that sucks! I barely passed so I feel like it’s largely dependent on the day. You should definitely be able to pass in July at least!
And thanks for updating the thread title!
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Passed N1 by a decent margin. I swear I still don’t understand their point scaling system, at all. My lowest score was a 37/60 on listening despite understanding almost all of the dialogues, I guess other people who passed generally did well and this weighted down the score. On the other hand, I got a 48/60 on Reading despite barely having time to finish and the long passage being a complete “WTF?!”
Oh well, not that I really care at this point… the itch has been scratched. Done and done with these standardized tests, time to read some novels instead 
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Syphus posted that in January of 2021… so… I’m guessing situations have changed.
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@Wlonk Yeah my study routine is, not great. But, with a full time job and a family and everything, spare time is pretty limited. Definitely don’t get nearly enough study time.
My daughter (four) has been taking some interest in learning Japanese (kids want to take after their parents and all), so we’ve been watching Super Simple and BabyBus for a while now. Recently she has taken to Paw Patrol in Japanese, as well as Bananya. That’s about the extent of my watching.
I’ll listen to podcasts, or NHK, sometimes at work or on the drive. Though at work, I barely pay attention, and on the drive, I just end of daydreaming about other stuff.
@Chellykins Nah, not in Japan. Tried many years ago, applied with Nova, who then declared bankruptcy a few weeks later. Gave up instead of looking at other avenues. Now, it’s not really an option anymore. Tutor would be nice, but time and money.
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Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t be able to get this far (which isn’t all that far, really) if I didn’t have the ability to study at work. Props to you for studying when you can!
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I didn’t stay up to check my results but just woke up in the middle of the night here and there was no going back to sleep until I found out my results. 
I passed N5! Now I can go back to sleep again.
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Responding to myself from a month and a half ago, WOW I passed the N1!!!
I guess overall my score makes sense, because I felt pretty good on the first part of the test but ran out of time during the reading and didn’t feel great about listening. But still, I assumed my score would be much lower over all.
Major props to Wanikani for allowing me to breeze through the kanji questions, and to the Shin Kanzen Master books for boosting my grammar and vocab! I feel pretty good now about the 6-8 hours a day for 50 days I spent preparing for this test.
And now, I am more motivated to work my way back through several thousand backlogged reviews across all the SRS decks I use.
おめでとう to everyone who passed, 頑張って to all who will try again! Personally, I think I’ll try again next year or the year after to try for a perfect score or something close.
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Yeah, I couldn’t get it on the US website either. I found it buried in my downloads folder.
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Oh being so close really hurts 
You made an excellent go at it anyway; like Wantitled said, you’ve totally got this next time.
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I heard other people said they couldn’t get access either, so I’m glad it’s not just me x’D But that’s great you found yours! I sent an email, hopefully I’ll hear back from them tomorrow. 
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Very surprised I got full score in N1 on my first try!! I only studied Core 10k words for vocab, and I’m pretty sure I answered a couple of reading questions and at least 1 listening question wrong. Thanks for the curve!!
Now I could focus on reading more Japanese books.
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Woop woop 
I honestly thought I did better than that in reading, but I’ll take it xD
(I’ve never gotten out of bed that fast before, had to find my registration number on top of the shelf.)
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