That was hard, I underestimated how much harder it’d be to concentrate in a room full of people compared to taking practice tests at home. I ran out of time on the reading part and had to guess on a few which I didn’t do on practice tests, and I have no idea how I did on listening because I was doing mostly educated guesses (or complete guesses) instead of confidently answering. I have no grasp of how well I did so just gotta wait till January to find out. I also felt that way in regards to pretty much everything I mentioned when I passed N2 so I still have some hope, but I feel like if I passed, it wasn’t by much.
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Apparently 30 or so people were kicked out of my friend’s exam for the same thing. I kinda welcome the strictness. Next I hope they deal better with people making noise mid-test or answering after time is up.
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I think someone in my test did get kicked out for the answering after the test was up. I was kind of flabbergasted, the invigilator told him to put his pencil down and he did, and then picked it up again, so she told him off again, and then he picked it up AGAIN… dude what are you thinking??
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So weird. Here (in Shimane Prefecture, Japan), we had to put our phones in the envelopes, but everyone was able to go to the bathroom, chat, and wander around during the breaks between sections. You definitely couldn’t leave the room during the test sections, though! That was reiterated multiple times before the start of each section.
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One woman in my room got really lucky. Her phone went off during the instructions rather than the exam part, and the proctors finally had her tear open her envelope, shut off the phone, and reseal it in a new envelope. Had it gone off five minutes later, she’d have been disqualified for sure.
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But exactly that was my problem. I went to the toilet during the break of course, but I also had to go twice during the test. I was allowed to go to the toilet during reading/vocab/grammar, but not during listening.
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I’m surprised they allowed you to go during the reading/vocab/grammar. In my room we were explicitly told if we wanted to leave for the bathroom during that time, we wouldn’t be allowed to return during that section.
If you have bladder issues though, I wonder if you can get a special dispensation?
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I also took N3. The reading about the train threw me for a loop. I don’t what that thing was with the husband kanji but it was just not a topic I tend to read or engage with much so it was kinda difficult. The one about the hotel also had a bunch of grammar I wasn’t familiar with that made answering the questions hard. The other readings about family members interacting with each other were a breeze in comparison bc they’re topics I’m exposed to pretty frequently in daily life. I guess I need to read more articles about trains, damn 
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first time jlpt taker here (just N5), super thankful for the practice tests on bunpro, they tracked to the structure used in the real tests and some of the question types are definitely not ones i came across when last had to take tests. it was nice to have all the structure-related WTFs in front of my screen at home on my own time. i’m feeling confident i passed but i also had to guess on more in the first two sections than on the practice runs.
i will say that i had a bit of a false sense of confidence regarding time. during practice i finished every grammar and reading in less than half the allotted time, but on the real test i only finished with a couple minutes to check my answers. it takes longer to bounce between bubble sheet and question book and fill-in and double check and … than to click and answer and “submit”.
anyway pass or fail i’m off towards N4 in 2026 or maybe N3 if the wind takes me there
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Whelp, the N3 is in the bag. All things told I think I did reasonably well.
Usually the vocab section is the part I do the best on but I felt weirdly nervous, maybe because this was my first time doing “the real thing” but I think I probably did fine. I was surprised it seemed to have furigana for most of the vocab section which I’ve never seen on n3 practice material.
Grammar and Reading was a pleasant surprise. It’s usually the most strenuous part of the practice tests for me but I actually feel really really good about it. The star questions were annoying as usual but I think I got at least two of those. I feel really good about most or all of the reading. I’m expecting at least 50 on reading.
Listening was the biggest challenge. I don’t think I bombed it but there were at least two questions where my brain farted out on recognizing a fairly common word and two quick responses I was kind of iffy on, but I think I got enough to be safe. The first group of questions wasn’t too bad, I’m a little iffy on one or two of the picture questions. I’d say at worst I probably missed about 6 but I think I still squeaked out listening decently.
I’ll be happy just to pass, I think 120 is worst case for passing, maybe 136 or so if I do similarly to my practice tests.
Now the real test is to not go insane waiting for the end of January to see my result and to not doom-spiral about weird scenarios like “oh no what if they lose my envelope or accidentally use the blank test sheet I accidentally ripped pulling off of the perforation (they thankfully had an extra)”. I think I’m just gonna… not look at any test related anything until the scores are out and try to forget JLPT even exists. I haven’t had time to actually read books the past few weeks so it’ll be nice to get back to fun material
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Finished N4 in Honolulu. Nothing about not taking bathroom breaks but we had to seal electronics in baggies and I had to get a new baggie cause I forgot headphones. That was new
Was afraid I had forgot to turn off my phone, asked Siri, got no response and tried my headphones to see if Bluetooth picked up and they said they had to go in bag too. LOl. Had to get new bag
Then our audio didn’t work. We literally all up and went to another room for listening but still a great experience
Regarding expectation. Think I knew 25 percent. Smart guessed 25 percent and whole guess about half. (Not that bad but felt like it). Knew I wasn’t ready but wanted the Hawaii break and did pass one practice exam by a hair. Will not be doing this again for N3 next year but if I fail will retry next year
Also as a 53 year old all the kids made me envious. Years of study and young brains ahead of them 
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N1 vocab, and grammar were about on par with the difficulty I expected. You either know the answer or not so it is what it is. I think I will get about 35 points judging from the answers posted online and my previous scores.
N1 reading was a lot trickier than last time. Alongside the actual passages which I thought were quite hard to get through, pretty much every question also had very long answers which took time to decipher. There weren’t many nebulous “What matches the author’s intent?” questions. Lots more “Why?” sorts of questions, at least in my opinion.
I swear some of the 4 question options in total were as long as the reading passage itself. Especially the passage where you had to compare to the different texts. My brain was pretty much gone at that point.
I’ll probably end up just scraping a pass if the answers online are to believed so maybe 20 to 25 points.
N1 is all about time management in the reading section and basically not wasting any time at all. Give yourself at least 1 hour and 10 minutes to do the reading and don’t get caught up in re-reading passages to find the answer.
Listening is what it is as always. I felt it was a a little bit easier this time but maybe that was because the audio quality was much clearer than when it’s in a huge conference hall. Again maybe 35 points, because I always make mistakes or have a small lapse of concentration in the moment. Maybe higher, maybe lower you never know.
So my worst predicted outcome is 90 points and my best is 95. I don’t think it matches my Japanese level but rather just reflects my test-taking level. I have always been bad at paper tests.
I don’t really enjoy the challenges of using Japanese in my daily life anymore but JLPT keeps me on my toes and keeps me engaged with the Japanese culture I enjoy at least. I think I’ll read the original Battle Royale novel now like I’ve always wanted to and be happy I can do that!
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Took the n5! Wasn’t as hard as I thought! Felt like I aced vocab and grammar but ngl I got lost a few
times during the listening 
still think I passed tho. Can’t wait to go for n4 or n3 next year!! 
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The listening intro last year gave me a heart attack. I was like. Crap I am missing questions and I understand NOTHING and then they said 問題1 れい and I was like “oh good”. Didn’t scare me as bad this year
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Were you in Tokyo doing N2 perchance? My room was the same where so many people got disqualified and it ended up taking much longer to actually leave the room because of it.
I wont disclose my location on this public forum but my exam did get out like 45 mins late rip
Reminds me of when i was taking the N3 a couple years ago, all these dudes started making tiktok’s on break. no one got DQ’d though, strangely enough.
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I felt pretty まあまあ about my test. I did the official JLPT practice test and did well enough and felt pretty confident through it, but I didn’t feel as confident on the actual test. Idk if it was a harder listening portion or if it was because I was pretty fatigued by that point, but I kept missing key moments. Either because I didn’t quite catch/understand what they said, or zoned out and missed it.
I really enjoyed the reading portion because I found the topics pretty interesting. However, I did not like some of the questions. It felt so hard picking the answer that was the best answer. 
Either way the studies will continue!
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Some guy started rhythmically tapping his foot really loud right in the middle of one of the listening questions and you could feel the entire room tense up. I actually got so distracted I guessed on that question. Thanks, foot-tap guy.
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I took N1 today and, after my mock exam results yesterday and opinions online that this test was harder, I had rather low confidence in the test going into it.
Fast forward and I finish the Grammar / reading section with 20 minutes left to review and I was Pretty 100% on most of the reading answers. Got to check up on a few I had marked as unsure on and changed a few answers as I had a fresh mind looking at them again.
Listening went fine, I would guess a 30 or 40/60. Vocabulary tripped me up more than anything (which I assumed it would).
Overall, I went in expecting to fail and came out feeling pretty confident I passed. Ended up being a pretty good day overall.
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