Yeah, this is the book series I’d always recommend for explicit JLPT prep to the classes I tutored at uni (depending on Japanese level 6-60 people per class).
Personally, not the biggest fan of explicitly learning for a test, but I can’t deny their usefulness, used them myself when I prepared for the N2 some years ago.
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I wish I liked the Shinkanzen books but tried a listening one and it just didn’t work for me, unfortunately.
Seemed pretty small too for the cost and I’m not sure how many there are for each JLPT N-number, but I guess you’re looking at quite a big bill if you want to get all of them!
Wondering whether to try again or keep going with other book series 
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Honestly you probably don’t need all of them but the reading, vocabulary, and grammar ones have all been really useful for me. I never wound up really using the listening and kanji ones.
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I highly suggest you give them another chance. As you can see, they are regarded the best book series for getting ready for the JLPT test. I did the Grammar and Reading books, and now I wished I had done the listening book as well. I highly, highly, recommend them.
Keep in mind that they are not normal textbooks. They’re more like a collection of JLPT style questions, with SOME explanations. That’s why the way I think people would get a better use out of them is AFTER you have learned all of the grammar points for the level you want to test on, here on BunPro (and other resources), BEFORE you start using them. Then you’ll get the full benefit of what they are excellent at.
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I feel like the Vocabulary and Kanji books can be easily replaced with other resources like Anki and Wanikani (or similar). You just need to make sure that, when you study Kanji, you REALLY memorize the radicals in all of them, so that you don’t get fooled on the test.
The ones I think are more valuable for the test are the Grammar, Reading and Listening books. Yes, you can get listening from other resources, but it’s not going to drill you on the JLPT listening style quizzes, which is different to other listening materials given that they are always trying to trick you with useless information. It’s sort of a different skill, per say.
Anyway, that’s what I’ll do moving forward, but it’s what I think is best for me I guess.
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I will say on N2 there are a lot of VERY SIMILAR words that only difference in nuance minorly and, at least for that level, the vocabulary book REALLY helped me out. It wasn’t just “remember these words” it was “here’s how this word is different to this one.” 感染 and 伝染, for example, just off the top of my head.
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I think that’s the case with Japanese in general. It’s such a nuanced language, but I get your point 
.
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Took the N1, didn’t really study for it at all. Just YOLO’ed on in like a steam boat, haha. Didn’t do as bad as I thought, definitely didn’t pass but I got some stuff right for sure. I’m not really good at tests so it’ll take me a fair few goes before I actually pass I suspect.
Infact I came on here specifically just to do a de-load and re-learn all of the grammar from the absolute beginning. I’ve realised that a lot of my knowledge is subconscious lol and I struggle to actually explain it even but yeah, I used to have the same problem with English (and still do when explaining more complex things) so it’s a work in progress.
I essentially just spam things until my brain eventually remembers them just through having seen whatever point/word so many times. Works better if I learn things from context and I actually have motivation to do so though (the amount of things I’ve learnt from gaming, lol).
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Hi there,
already thinking about when to try N4 and if I’m ready.
Along those lines I was thinking about the necessary reading speed required. Could someone give me an idea of how long something should take to read in an exam setting (putting nerves and time pressure to one side!)
For example, given a piece of text e.g.
how many minutes would you allow ?
(if this is this a good example of an N4 level text)
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Suddenly realised what you guys are talking about with the 
questions. The ones where you have to rearrange the words to make a sentence? Oh gosh yeah, those are my least favorite, during the test I skipped over those and left to the end
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Try to make it your goal to read and understand what you just read as fast as possible. If you can do that in one go, even better. I’m around N3 level, so reading and answering that passage took me around 3 mins. That’s faster than you’d need to read for the test, but even if you can read something like that within 5 mins, you’ll be more than ready. That would be my recommendation.
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I realised you don’t even have to read that quickly for N4 anymore.
In the practice tests, there always seemed to be 10 questions, but in the actual test, I think there were only 8 questions, with one fewer text.
Not sure when that change happened
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It changed a little bit for N4 and N5 in December 2020. Fewer question, less time.
In December 2022 N1 got also a little bit adjusted.
https://www.jlpt.jp/e/guideline/testsections.html
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At first glance it might seem like they made the test easier with fewer questions, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Now you have less chances to attain points in your favor.
Every time you get an answer wrong, means more points against your final score. In particular, the N5 test takers got screwed since the amount of answers got severely reduced. N1 and N4 is not as bad, but still less chances.
Similar to what @Jose7822 said, this took me about ~3 minutes total, but I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere between N4 and N3 levels. When I took the N4 last weekend, I wound up with a pretty good chunk of time left over in the reading section (time to check my answers and time to just…stare at the wall, lol) so 5 minutes is probably a solid goal. Might even leave you with a bit of extra time.
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For anyone interested in knowing what the N1 test is like, Tokini Andy made a video about it:
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In London the invigilator in my room said that N5 and N1 were the most popular with similar numbers, and he said that there were 150 people doing N5…
You used to get two chances in the listening exam !?! 
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Well, good to know that N1 is worth doing after all 
I know
Totally! I was planning on taking it anyway, but I’m glad to hear that it’s not just a bunch of useless material like some people say.
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I wonder if my work would give me a 2 month sabbatical so I too could read manga and play japanese DS all day every day 
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