I have been learning Japanese for roughly four and a half years now, and after finally reaching the point where I can somewhat comfortably read Japanese light novels and watch anime without subs in 2021, I decided it’s time to put my skills to the test. So I signed up for the JLPT, level N2, in December. As I have just received the results the other day, I decided to write about the experience a little.

For those who don’t know: the JLPT (short for Japanese Language Proficiency Test) is the official test for Japanese language ability, targeted at foreigners and administered by the Japanese Ministry of Education and the Japan Foundation.
The test has five levels from N5 to N1, with N1 being the hardest. That said, an N1 is not considered to be near native level. Comparing it to the CEFRL, I’ve seen people compare N1 to a high B2 to low C1 level. The N2 that I took is typically seen as a high B1 to intermediate B2 level, depending on how well you did.
The test is completely standardized, the institutions holding the test around the globe all get the question and answer sheets as well as the voice recordings straight from Japan and send the filled out answer sheets back there for them to correct and evaluate. The paper materials only have instructions in Japanese and some parts additionally in English. If you can’t speak English and your Japanese isn’t good enough yet, you won’t understand the instructions.
If you want to study at a Japanese university or work for a Japanese company, they typically require you to have passed the JLPT N1. I’ve very rarely seen something require at least an N2, but generally speaking, the pass-certificate for anything below N2 is practically useless, and N2 itself probably is, too. But I didn’t do this with any specific goal in mind, I just felt like taking on the challenge, to see how well I’d do, and get a better idea of my current skill level. As I’m learning only alone and in private and never had Japanese lessons (except the lowest level course my university offered, which was way below my level and taught me nothing) I don’t get many opportunities to measure myself otherwise.

In any case, I’m putting my results here upfront:

Interestingly, the JLPT contains absolutely no written or oral production exercises whatsoever. All questions are multiple choice, only expecting you to understand written and spoken Japanese, or in case of the grammar exercises, be able to pick the right vocab, particle etc. to put into a gap in a sentence. I knew that beforehand of course, but if it weren’t like this, I doubt I could have passed. I have little more than zero practice when it comes to speaking or writing something in Japanese. I’m pretty sure I’d be able to communicate decently enough to get around in Japan on my own, but I’d certainly be far from grammatically correct or eloquent.
In any case, as you can see from the image above, it went pretty well for me. Before taking the test, I was considering doing N3 instead of N2, and even felt a bit risky to register for N2. I was sure I could pass N3, but not so sure about N2. But looking at the results now, perhaps I could have gone straight up to N1. Honestly, that would have been pretty epic. Maybe I’ll do that next year.
The listening part was what I was the most “afraid” of, as up to that point I’d only watched two anime without subtitles, and that was close to all the practice I’ve had with listening. Compare that to reading, which I’ve been doing close to every day for the past one or two years. Perhaps you can imagine my surprise when it turned out I’d almost aced the listening part. Reading still went decently well, only the vocabulary/grammar part is where I seem to be lacking, which is… fair I guess, considering the sort of questions they put there, as well as the fact that I never specifically learned grammar and just sort of pick it up passively along the way. I still have to say, some of these questions were seriously hard. I’ll try to give you an example (roughly translated to English):

Question: “I’d like to ____ my health insurance. Can you please tell me the necessary steps?”
a) quit b) pause c) cancel d) discontinue

Perhaps this doesn’t translate too well, but try picking the right answer in a foreign language, when three of the given options mean virtually the same thing in the given context, and the fourth actually means something totally different, but fits just as well. What the hell?
I guess that these words, while having the same meaning, are in reality used only in different contexts, but this is something that is very, very difficult to figure out for someone who hasn’t already seen each of these words “in the wild” a hundred times. This is made even worse by the fact that two of these words I’d never seen before, I only figured out the meaning from the Kanji (and confirmed with a dictionary after the test).

In short, the grammar exercises sort of sucked. The listening and reading part made up for that though, as they were actually fun. In the listening part, I was surprised how easily I could follow. I needed to concentrate pretty hard, but the results prove that it worked out well. I got a bit scared when for the second half they even started giving the possible answer options only verbally, whereas in the previous questions you had the possible answers given in writing, and thus also before you heard the dialogue. But even that turned out to be very doable.
The reading part was especially entertaining and diverse. There was a (blog?) article by a guy comparing network devices' online/offline states to humans, and said that we go “online” when we e.g. travel and open our minds for new ideas. Then there was another guy explaining why parrots imitate human language, and a bunch of other texts I don’t remember in detail. In any case, that was fun. It also showed me that I can actually comprehend a rather large variety of different materials using very different vocabulary. The test definitely gave a boost to my confidence.

It also wasn’t too stressful. The listening part was all on a single prerecorded CD that just read the instructions for each question aloud, followed by the associated dialog and answer options where applicable, over the course of 75 minutes. The grammar/vocabulary and reading part were all combined into a single part of 105 minutes, and I finished with 15 minutes to spare.
That said, it was a rather long and tiring test. At least we got a twenty minute break inbetween.
This is also where I gotta give a shoutout to my fellow socially awkward weebs. I was sort of looking forward to maybe talk a bit with other Japanese learners about our experiences etc. But when the break began, everyone went outside the room, took a free spot in the hallway, then took out their phone or just stared blankly at the ground.
No one talked. Not even a single person.
After twenty minutes were over, we all went back inside silently, and sat down at our desks again.
Okay, cool.

Another observation I made was that a good third of the participants were (or at least looked) Chinese. Then again, I probably shouldn’t be surprised, as when I think back to the Japanese course at my university, more than half of the participants were Chinese.

Anyway, I wish they’d allowed us to take the question sheets back home. The question and answer sheets were two separate pieces/stacks of paper anyway, but I guess they don’t want the questions published online. In fact, you had to sign a statement that you wouldn’t publish anything. They told us we would not get a test result and no certificate should we do so anyway. It’s still a shame, because the test had a lot of real good written materials that I would have loved to turn into flash cards. I tried to write down as much as possible from memory afterwards, but of course that didn’t get me too far.

That was pretty much all I had to say. All in all, I’m very happy with the result. Perhaps I’ll try the N1 next year, but as it is only held once a year and I still haven’t figured out where I’ll be and what I’ll do next December, I’ll have to wait and see.