that’s good to know. Do you happen to know how the N3 deals with furigana? I’m quite confident in my kanji, but I worry if some common words that I see in kanji will be in hiragana and I just do nt recognize them.
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There could still be quite a few words written out in hiragana, but nowhere near as many as N4 or especially N5.
From what I can remember, I think it’s especially in the grammar section where I was trying to work out where the words start and end, I guess possibly because they believe the kanji vocabulary questions at the start of the paper are where they want to test kanji specifically.
But by N3, lack of kanji is usually much less of a problem 
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that sounds good. just as long as they don’t try to whole 本日 and 日本 style of tricking you with kanji. (if you aren’t paying full attention)
My biggest worry is honestly vocabulary. I feel like my vocabulary is quite lacking but at the same time I’m able to have conversations to a decent degree. i guess I should really hit the books.
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That’s almost certain to be in there somewhere! 
Sometimes it does seem like every single question is a trick question and makes you wonder why they can’t include just a few reasonable questions that aren’t designed specifically to trip you up and then laugh in your face as you walk straight into the next round of tripwire 
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reminds me of those old ACT prompts for english, it’s like what is the primary statement of this paragraph, then it’s like 4 very plausible answers.
But i guess they want you to understand te difference between
"汚水を飲まないでください。”
and "汚水を飲んでください。”
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They all seem very plausible until you see one of your answers from a couple of months or years before and you say “How could I be so stupid!” xD
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For a good idea of the difficulty of each level you can check out the eiken. It has some extra levels (pre-2, pre-1) but otherwise the difficulty and style of test is pretty similar (except the eiken has output). Depending on your outlook you may find it either an encouraging or sobering experience. Here is a link to some past questions you can check out.
@Rukifellth What’s your reading speed like? My strategy for the grammar and reading paper was to do the reading first, blast through it as quickly as possible to get extra time to spend on the grammar questions. It worked for me as I’d hit a few grammar questions that I’d dither over and waste time. Also I really struggle to do the star questions under pressure, so I wanted to feel 'okay, the rest of the remaining time is just to figure out these bad boys;
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Star questions are one of my few strengths generally.
my reading speed… I can read about 10 pages of a light novel in an hour. so less than ideal. I have been speeding up as of late since I started seriously reading a month ago (weening off manga, just picked up a few books from bookoff today) so I anticipate my reading speed shall improve slowly over the next couple months. I intend to use books for the bulk of my vocabulary study until the test.
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I guess it will vary by difficulty of novel, but that’s much quicker than me, good one!
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Vocabulary is actually the reason I’m retaking N4 instead of skipping to N3. I greatly overestimated how much I knew 
I want to try to get a pass under my belt to keep me motivated. Knowing me, possibly failing N3 would probably set me back in motivation. Good for you for going straight for it!
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Thanks. I mean I have a lot of practical experience in japanese. probably more than most people in this forum, however I am still hesitant about things. I’m very confident in grammar and listening and to an extent kanji. vocabulary I plan on reading all of 君の名は, ほっといてください, and this other isekai i found at book off called アラフォー賢者異世界生活日記. I hope these books will teach me at least enough to glide by a 60 grade. of course patching it with bunpro and jpdb.io will help.
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Also signed up for N2 today. I am going to work on wrapping up n2 here on Bunpro and then just read a lot before the exam. We shall see.
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It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it here but I signed up to take the N2 in July. I will also be trying the N1 in December, depending on how I do in July. I have never taken the JLPT before so I’m looking forward to it even though it’s mostly useless.
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Can I use a ‘My Number Card’ as identification for the JLPT test?
I changed my name on my Zairyu card and passport already, but my My number card still has my maiden name on it (as I wasn’t married yet when I signed up for JLPT)
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Also, I haven’t received my test voucher yet… 
I received mine yesterday, so if you’re in Japan it should probably arrive in the next few days.
I’m on the East Coast in the US so no JLPT until December for me
皆、頑張って
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You’ve made it sound like signing up for JLPT was a marriage pre-requisite
“I’ll marry you once you’ve got that N5 certificate in your hand and not a moment before!”
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2 weeks away from the JLPT, just finished my N4 Deck today, pretty happy i managed to do that before the actual test (although, i should have worked harder to finish this earlier and give me more time to practice).
So far, the journey leading up to N4 has been pretty similar to the journey before N5.
- I took way too long to finish the N5 deck (same thing now for the N4)
- My kanji knowledge was pretty good for N5 (Same thing now for the N4 too)
- I took some practice tests for the N5 back then and passed all (Same thing for the N4 now)
- My feelings before the N5 tests were a mix of confidence and a slight fear of not passing (feeling the same way now i guess)
The confidence is due to technically having learned all i needed to learn (2000 + vocab, 700 kanji, all of the grammar points).
And the fear of not passing is due to not enough practice i think (should’ve listened more, should have read more).
How are your hopes and feelings guys?
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