My feelings exactly 
3 Likes
Woah, so many people doing N3+ this December. You guys are amazing! 
5 Likes
I’m in Japan and have taken the test twice here. That’s what I was refering to. The last instruction (I think) on the front stated that writing in them was okay
edit: Okay I didn’t see what you said earlier, but rest assured at least on the N2 vocab/grammar/reading booklet it states that taking notes is okay
2 Likes
I read it too!
1 Like
Took N1! Passing N2 exactly 2 years ago, and since then have been working in Japan (fully in Japanese) for the past year, wanted to see if I had any natural improvements through just working in Japan.
Spoiler Alert: Yes It Helped.
Didn’t get caught up on much in N1, had so much extra time after the reading so I just re-read every reading section a lot slower to catch any misunderstandings. (The word 出馬 got me real good though… why does exit + horse mean “running as an electoral candidate”…)
For listening, I looked back to N2 where I had to focus all my energy on being able to understand the listening section (which went well, but tired me out like crazy). I guess with all the passive listening at work, I barely had to focus and I still got all the details… I guess I realized the true power of complete immersion… getting so used to the sound of Japanese it’s second nature to hear and parse it.
Anyways, was a fun time and looking forward to taking it again and aiming for 満点 one day!!
17 Likes
Would you mind sharing with me the link where did you find the answers? I also took the N3 and really wanted to check how I did on the test.
1 Like
I thought I was doing well, until the guy said “15 minutes left” and I still had 3 pages to go orz
I practiced each section individually a lot, but doing it all back to back and with a time limit was brutal. By the end my vision was all blurry (not the best time to realize I probably need glasses).
Gotta level up my stamina for next time. Also got to figure out how to read at least 2x faster.
4 Likes
I took the N2 in Tokyo on Sunday, and immediately after the exam I felt I had failed the vocab/kanji/grammar section, while the readings and listening were actually not that bad. However, I did take a prep class that focused on the reading only (it was a really boring class, but it forced me to study lol) so that’s probably why.
This morning I checked around on reddit and saw some answers for the vocab and reading section, and I might have actually passed? I don’t remember all my answers of course, but I’m feeling a lot more positive now! Won’t know until the end of January of course, so I’ll just try not to think about it haha
However, since vocab/kanji really is my weak point, I’m definitely going to be focusing on wanikani now. There were a lot of N3 vocab on the N2 that I couldn’t remember either oops. That new year’s lifetime sale is just waiting for me haha If I have to retake it in July, I’ll be ready for sure 
4 Likes
Here you go :
4 Likes
I didn’t know this one either, but I guessed it as being similar to the saying ‘in a two-horse race.’
4 Likes
@Aislin I remember you asked me about my preparations and stuff, but I can’t find your post any more; did you delete it? Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, but I was quite exhausted from the test preps and I also spent the test weekend with two friends so there was not much time for me to respond, and I didn’t want to give you just a half-assed response, so…
Anyways, if you're still interested...
You asked me why I struggled. I didn’t say I struggled (and I didn’t feel like it) but doing vocab and grammar reviews every day for months is just tiring for me. I started studying around early August so that’s a long time, and in the end the vocab started to pile up a little bit which makes things always quite exhausting for me. I’m not the youngest any more and so I need to explicitly study vocab and grammar, and it’s very rare that I can actually pick up something just from reading, without adding it to my anki deck and actually studying it. Also, unfortunately WK is not very helpful for me because the SRS intervals get too long too fast, so I hardly know any of the WK vocabulary, and if I want to learn a WK word I have to add it to my anki deck as well. I did 15 new words per day which is a lot for me, and in the end I had ~150 reviews per day which alone would take me about an hour to do.
You also asked my why I needed to prep so much although I took part in so many bookclubs. Well, participating doesn’t mean being good 
I’m still reading at a very very slow pace (depending on the book that means around 2 - 10 pages per hour), which does not go along well with the strict test time limits. Also, for the more difficult book clubs I bailed out at some point because it took me so long and was quite hard to understand. And finally, I found the N2 test texts to be quite different from books as they are much denser in terms of complicated words and information. So I had to do some studying to get used to that kind of texts.
You also asked me why I needed to prep so much vocab although I read so much. I double-checked this out of curiosity. My anki deck contains ~1650 vocab that are tagged with N2 (this is basically the tag you can see on Jisho by the way). There are some other vocab that I picked up along the way from N2 textbooks and the like, but I didn’t include those in this check. Out of those 1650 words I have seen less than 450 in a book, ever. So yeah, there is quite a number of vocab that I needed to study even if I could remember all the vocab from just seeing them in a book (which I clearly don’t, unfortunately.)
You also asked my why I needed to prep so much grammar although I read so much. Unfortunately, higher level grammar is mainly built from normal words, so this type of grammar is often hard to detect for me when I don’t know that it is something special. So I would usually just read it as the individual words that build it. Sometimes it makes sense, and that grammar point actually carries that meaning, which is great. Sometimes it makes sense, but the grammar point actually conveys a different nuance or meaning, which leads me astray. And sometimes it doesn’t make that much sense. 
Also, many of the grammar points are formal, so I wouldn’t encounter them anyways in the novels I usually read.
Altogether that means I had to study all the grammar in isolation as reading did not help me at all here.
Last not least, of course the consistent feeling of “You should not do X, you should rather study instead” was a bit draining as well. And that’s what I basically meant when I said “I’m totally tired and annoyed and just wish it would be over already” 
My feedback on taking the N2: I found it pretty hard compared to the prep material I had seen… but the reading passages were actually slightly easier than e.g. the Shinkanzen reading book or the ASK half test, and the grammar section was also quite ok. But even in the warm-up questions about vocab and kanji, I did not know most of the words 
That was a bit shocking to me… Of course I could guess a lot but I hardly ever had this feeling of “Yes, I know this for sure”… Anyways, I managed to stick to my planned schedule of 40 minutes for the first part and 65 minutes for the rest, and I managed to get through everything except the very last reading question (that was something I had expected as well).
Looking back, I really have no clue whether I passed or failed. I’ll find out when the test results come out
16 Likes
I assumed because 競馬 is pretty popular, it was more sports-related… (the 大会に出る option)
I immediately crossed out the election-related option LOL
Apparently it comes from higher-ranking generals who used horses to go into battle?
Pretty interesting!
5 Likes
Flew over to Edmonton to take the N1 as one of my first big steps towards becoming a translator! It was cancelled everywhere else in Canada, including the uni an hour’s bus ride from my house RIP.
First impressions: Edmonton is cold af. Have never felt actively assaulted by the weather before.
Came out of it feeling confident-ish but still figured it could go either way: I was stumped by a few vocab questions and some of the reading sections were pretty tough, but the listening especially was pretty brutal. After looking my answers and comparing them to what’s out there, however, I’m feeling really good about it! I stuck to my guns on a lot of guesses which turned out to be right (looking at you 押収). Now just to wait until the end of January to see for sure 
Congrats to everyone who took the test this year! We got through it!
17 Likes
Yep, I got anxious after a few days with no reply, and I deleted it
I thought even if you just forgot/didn’t see it, you won’t get back to it anymore, but it turns out I was wrong. Thank you for your answer!
6 Likes
Ah sorry, I should have sent a quick reply explaining things, but on top of JLPT prep and a bit of work I also visited two friends on the test weekend so I had zero free time or at least it felt like that
I hope I remembered all of your questions - if not, please ask again!
5 Likes
1 Like
I took JLPT for the first time this year, and started with N4!
Was feeling pretty confident after vocabulary and kanji sections (thanks to WaniKani, this part felt like the easiest for me) and even grammar and reading.
I know that I made some mistakes and was also hesitating about some questions but nothing too catastrophic I guess.
Then came the listening section. I thought it was horrible.
During mock exams I did at home to prepare for the actual test (in “real” conditions, so I literally printed answer sheets and filled answers with a pencil and stuff) this section was pretty much okay.
I scored around 80~90~% for each one of these mock exam listening sections, so I was really not worried about this part of the exam, but at the actual test: it went so FAST.
Like, I mostly understood what they were talking about but there were so much confusing details and keigo verbs + formulas. And the speed. Oh my. I had to rely on luck for some answers and hope I heard right for the others, but found it waaaay more difficult than mock exams. Topics were quite unexpected (not your usual “please buy milk at the store, we still have vegetables and we don’t need cheese” N4 questions)
I hope I get enough to pass anyway, but I’m not feeling very hopeful. Don’t know how I could have anticipated this by studying any more than I did (since mock exams were ok, I thought I was ready?), so I’m a bit disappointed.
Is it usually like this? Is the listening section the actual painpoint of JLPT? I talked to other fellow test takers after the exam and this feeling was generally shared among them too.
Sorry about the whining, I’m just feeling sour from this specific part, and looking for feedback. The exam was overall a very nice experience and I liked the mood there, so it was not all so bad.
Good luck to all test takers! 
7 Likes
I think it might have to do more with Japanese having a small range of phonemes and being very context-dependent so as long as you’re familiar with the terms needed in a given context, like words like “victim”, “crime”, etc. being used in news reports, etc. you should be fine .
But at least in my experience it takes way more practice than the other aspects of the language.
Fingers crossed for your success!
4 Likes
Oh, JLPT results can contribute to that? I had no idea.
Well, on the bright side, I guess that at least some of what you studied this time will stay with you until you’re able to take the exam again, and perhaps it even helped you improve significantly. (I’m finding that I’m learning quite a lot with the N1 books I bought anyhow, and some of it is so surprising that I feel it’ll stick with me.)
Either way, I hope you’ll get the chance to take the JLPT the next time it rolls around. Hang in there!
5 Likes
Yeah, there is a point system and N2 contributes 10 points, N1 15 points towards the goal.
It will definitely stick with me, and I hope it won’t leave me until the next JLPT. ^^"
Thank you! 
Edit: I checked the point calculator and it’s actually 5 points more than I remembered^^
7 Likes