Japanese Language

How I Managed to Pass the JLPT N1 without Any Preparation

No textbooks, no tuition, and no memorizing kanji lists — but there’s a twist.

One afternoon many years ago, my boss asked me if I had passed N1 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

“No, I took it twice and I failed, but I passed JLPT N2,” I explained, somewhat embarrassed.

“I suggest you pass it as soon as you can since I’m going to put in a recommendation to headquarters to send you to work in Japan. It’s not a must-have but it sounds better when you can tell people you have it, right?”

And so began my third attempt to pass the highest level of the most sacred examination known to all learners of Japanese as a foreign language — the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, better known as the JLPT.

Every year, thousands of learners of Japanese as a foreign language spend time and money buying textbooks for the JLPT.

In 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of examinees reached a peak of 1.36 million people!

That’s a lot of learners for a language that, for all practical purposes, has real use only in Japan.

It’s odd for a language that is supposedly very difficult to be so popular — but I suppose it speaks to the cultural power that Japan still commands, even if it is nothing like it was in the 1980s when scholars thought Japan would become a serious contender to the United States.

I Felt Like a Fraud without the JLPT N1

I write this as someone who got obsessed with the Japanese language and spent years trying to master the language. Not having the JLPT N1 was a sort of personal embarrassment. I was fluent enough to use the language, but I wasn’t good enough to pass the JLPT.

To be clear, I don’t think that the JLPT is a good measure of Japanese language capability. As I’ve written elsewhere, the JLPT doesn’t test you on speaking abilities. You could pass the JLPT and be terrible at speaking.

Little wonder then, Japanese people don’t always understand it when foreigners speak Japanese.

The JLPT also doesn’t test you on your writing abilities.

Even so, not having the JLPT N1 made me feel like a fraud.

Back when I was studying Japanese at the university, the highest level attainable was called the JLPT Level 1. I don’t remember the exact year I took it.

I applied for it, thinking that I would try it for fun, just to see how difficult it was going to be. Oh yeah, my idea of entertainment is paying to take a test knowing I was probably going to fail.

I didn’t prepare at all.

Unsurprisingly, I got destroyed quicker than the time it takes to say arigatō gozaimasu.

The JLPT Was Updated

And then they introduced the new “N” version which we are now familiar with.

Aha! Now, I was going to pass the JLPT. The newer version was supposed to be easier, isn’t it?

Or so I had mistakenly thought.

In truth, what the administrating body had done, among other things, was to introduce a new test level, N3. This was to bridge the difficulty gap between the old Levels 3 and 4.

That was irrelevant to me because I hadn’t even bothered with the old JLPT Level 4. My Japanese teacher at the time said it was too easy. She said that given our university’s ridiculously intensive curriculum, we would all be good enough to try straightaway for level 3, and so I did.

Or was it the old Level 3 that I skipped? To be honest, I don’t remember it all that well.

I only remember skipping one of the levels.

In any case, I paid the money — ouch — and then I applied to take the new JLPT N1.

I told myself I was going to study and prepare this time.

Only, I didn’t.

As any working adult knows, it’s really difficult to set aside time to properly study. On weekends you just want to doze. And this might certainly be one of the biggest challenges for adult learners of foreign languages.

Not only are our brains less plastic to absorb new languages, but we are also able to commit less time to it.

And soon, it was the day of the test.

The listening comprehension section wasn’t difficult. The familiar narration which I had listened to so many times reminded me the test had started.

天気がいいから、散歩しましょう。Tenki ga ii kara, sanpo shimashō.

“The weather is good, so let’s take a walk.”

After the listening comprehension, it was all uphill.

I failed again, although I came rather close to passing.

The challenge for me was actually in the kanji section. Even though I came to the Japanese language with a background in Chinese, both languages use the characters somewhat differently.

But really, the reason was that my Chinese was laughably bad. If I even failed at JLPT, what hope do people coming from other cultural backgrounds have in their war against the Kanji Gods?

My Secret Advantage

I did have something on my side. In the interim before my next attempt, I started work at a Japanese company.

And despite getting ripped apart on Twitter for saying this, I recommend working in a Japanese company if you want to level up your Japanese language skills quickly.

Even though I’d like to believe that things have improved somewhat today, by and large, many Japanese global executives struggle with the English language.

Hence, they communicate through interpreters. Although I was not the official interpreter at my company, I did have to help out when we had Japanese visitors from headquarters in Singapore.

Plus, I did have the opportunity to speak directly with my boss without having to go through a third party.

From time to time, I also wrote e-mails in Japanese to communicate with people in the headquarters.

All this meant that I could improve my business Japanese skills.

So, by the third time I took the test, listening comprehension was a breeze — even if it was tricky — and I managed to finally pass the kanji section. Just barely, but pass I did.

But I had lied about passing without any preparation.

I did prepare after all.

I had been preparing for it the whole time.

My decision to study in Japan for one semester, and my choice to join a Japanese company despite low pay and low prospects were all milestones and sacrifices I had made in my very long preparation.

I finally passed the JLPT N1 in 2015. By then, my journey to passing the JLPT N1 had taken nearly a decade from the time I first started taking formal Japanese lessons in 2006.

Using Japanese in real life prepared me for the JLPT better than any last-minute cramming ever did.

Once I had passed the JLPT N1 and put all that behind me, I understood another truth: the only test that mattered was real-life usage.

And it’s a lifelong one. A never-ending cycle of preparation and testing for a language I know I will never quite master.

The author is an editor of Japonica, a Japan-focused publication, but also writes more generally about culture and society. Discover his most-read stories here.

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