お疲れさまでした
I’m happy to report that in Leiden University drinking water was allowed, sound volume was adjusted to a comfortable level, and there were no rules against picking up pencils. The staff did all around great job, as far as I could tell.
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I took the N4 today and feel pretty confident about it. Daily practice on here for 6 months has definitely paid off (many years of on and mostly off learning before that certainly helped too). Now the real challenge begins in seeing if I can make the leap to N3 by the end of the year, which will include tons of stuff I’ve never known before
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I do wonder whether doing the test outside Japan is better. Reading the stories above about no water, poor air con, hard to hear sound etc. Seems quite challenging, but I also understand you can get equally bad venues outside Japan too.
Compared to this, SOAS in London was paradise 
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I was also pretty impressed by Leicester University - all was very organised, and was pretty good conditions to take the test.
They did have a couple of minor tech issues with the Listening section, but nothing as jarring as above.
Interestingly, assuming I’m reading the table correctly
Japanese-Language Proficiency Test - Wikipedia ,
it does look like the pass rate is a good chunk higher overseas than in Japan.
I would guess this is mainly because it’s a lot more effort to do the test outside of Japan, but perhaps better test centre conditions could play a role, who knows.
Also, does anyone know when they usually release results? I’m assuming in a couple of months-ish.
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My place was pretty cool about the rules. Of course we couldn’t interrupt, talk to each other and so on but water was allowed and if you just held pencil but didn’t write when it wasn’t the time then it’s fine. Listening was also fine, everything was clear (at least audible, whether my comprehension was as good as audio quality is another matter 
). However there was no air conditioning and the classroom I wrote in was really hot. And by the time we reached listening it was also a bit smelly 
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Everything turned out to be alright after all, the instructors did everything they could to make it as comfortable as possible. They even had spare pens and erasers to give out in case someone forgot theirs. Drinking water during the test was no problem either, the volume was okay and the room was cooled with fans, no AC but it was enough.
@samburv Our instructors told us that our results will be available as early as early August, but the certificates will take until September. I guess it depends on the country when you get your results? Everywhere online I read that it usually takes 2 months.
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Just want to add that not all testing sites are terrible! I took the test in Nagasaki yesterday - the room was air conditioned and the audio for listening was clear.
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I had a google, and it looks like the results in previous years were online on 21st August, so sometime in August seems a good bet.
That’s what we’ve been told on site as well: online results should be available around end of August, although there won’t be any additional email notification when they are.
Now that the dust has settled a bit I have to say that the N1 listening test this year leaned really hard into one of the speakers just listing off all the answers written down but somewhat altering the phrasing with a single word or adding a blink (the equivalent of that for your ears) and you’ll miss it ですが or whatever so that it sounded like all the answers could be correct. I got 40/60 last time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I get less than 20 this time. I was really guessing the answers.
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there were some audio problems in the room I was in, but they allowed the people who felt as if they could not hear well to stay behind and attempt those questions again.
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Ah yeah I did hear about that from a friend in that room.
Wait does that mean your in Nagasaki too? And we might know each other?
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We may have seen each other around, perhaps even spoken a handful of times 
. I’ll buy you a beer if you ever manage to correctly identify me.
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hahaha no way! I`ll get my detective hat on
This has been a good reminder to not use my real name as my username…
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I was thinking the same thing haha. At least you spelled it right, unlike my dumb ass mispelling my own nickname. You can also take solace in the fact that somewhere out there, in an unknown future, is a beer with your name on it.
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Took the N2 at the 五反田TOCビル in Tokyo. First of all, it was on the 13th floor. The line for the elevator was excruciating. Took a good 20 minutes of standing/sweating as one does with Japan’s summer temperatures. I don’t know about you guys, but I do not think the voice actors had been outside that day. 天気が良くないからエアコンをつけてくれぇ~！
Grammar and Vocab went fairly well for me. Reading however went terribly. I think it was because of the heat (and also it was super hard compared to any of the mock tests I’ve done). Due to the heat, I found it hard to concentrate fully. I probably got a lot wrong but I am hoping that I can reach the 19 required points for the reading section.
Listening was decent. I got blessed with a front-row seat during 七夕 (though, how useful that ended up being, I don’t know yet). I know I didn’t get everything correct, but I didn’t feel like too many questions stumped me, it was rather a challenge of staying focused. During the listening-section, those sitting around me were pure chaos.
I had someone coughing, sitting directly behind me. The guy next table over started opening the paper before the test started (I gave a stare to one of the proctors). A person next to him had his phone go off during the absolute last moment of the last listening question. It happened right after the final “what did they choose?”, so he got DQ’d at the end of a long day. Then at the same time as that was happening, two people on the front row managed to flip their table due to how low the desks were. The desk made an extremely loud sound, however the test was over at that point so all good in my book.
I am impressed by how poorly those who took N2 knew Japanese. If you can’t take basic instructions like 開けないでください or スマホをオフにしてください, how can they pass N2? 
Anyways, right after the test I changed the calendar widget on my phone from showing the July JLPT, now it says December JLPT (145 days at time of writing this). I think as long as I get a sectional pass I will pass. I started to study N1 grammar on Monday and today I started on N1 reading practice + 敬語 practice as well. So if I pass the N2, see y’all for the N1 in December.
お疲れさまでした！
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I took the N3 in Spain, the vocabulary/kanji part was easy IMHO, and the grammar part was approvable but I struggled a little more… However, I think, objectively, the listening part was unusually difficult, did anyone else experience this?
I cannot compare it to any other tests, but listening part didn’t feel more difficult than the other parts of N3. If anything, it felt like there is less time pressure. I just found that my concentration was already waning, so there might be mistakes because of that.
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I feel that. When I was taking N3 during the breaks I was trying to talk to the person next to me, and he couldn’t understand basic japanese phrases. (eg. あなたはどちら部分が心配ですか?) to the point to where when I said katakana words, he said “ごめんなさい、英語がわかりません。” I was saying words like “スタート” and stuff when he said that.
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