The Gate

Language is the one subject where showing up daily beats showing up brilliantly. This chapter is not read once — it is visited every day, before anything else.

This book has one job: get you reading real Japanese at N3, then N2. The route is fixed — grammar in small bricks, vocabulary in themed sets, and retrieval practice every single day. Reading a word does almost nothing for memory. Being forced to recall it — meaning from kanji, reading from kanji, word from meaning — is what moves it to long-term storage. That is what the Dojo below does: it pulls vocabulary from every chapter you have marked done and fires twenty mixed questions at you.

The daily loop

1. Open the Dojo and run one drill session (20 questions, ~5 minutes). It only quizzes chapters you've finished, so it is always fair — and it gets harder as you progress, because the pool grows.
2. Read today's chapter (or re-read one you feel shaky on — re-reading a shaky chapter is progress, not failure).
3. Run that chapter's own drills until you score at least 8/10 on each mode.
4. Mark it done. The streak counter in the sidebar is watching. Streaks start at two.

Rules of the Dojo

• Answer before you reveal. Commit — say it out loud or write it. Recognition feels like knowledge; recall is knowledge.
• Wrong answers are the product. Each miss tells you exactly which chapter to revisit. The drill names the chapter on every card.
• Furigana discipline. Readings everywhere in this book are hidden until you hover or tap the word. Always attempt the reading first. You did the hard work of learning kanji — this is where it starts paying interest.
• Use your ears. Most words and every example sentence have a 🔊 button (your browser's built-in Japanese voice — no network needed). Hearing the word as you recall it doubles the encoding.

What "done" means in this book

Mark a chapter done when: you've read it, you can pass its drills at 8/10, and you could explain its core grammar point to someone else in two sentences. Not when you've merely scrolled to the bottom. The progress bar is a contract with yourself — keep it honest and it will carry you to the gate.

Japanese is spelled with 46 phonetic letters called hiragana. Learn to read them and every word in this book opens up. This chapter and the next take most people 3–6 days total — the single best investment in your entire journey.

How the system works

Every hiragana is one syllable with a fixed sound that never changes. No "silent e", no "gh" nonsense — か is ka, today, tomorrow, forever. The whole set is a 5-vowel grid: every consonant row uses the same five vowels in the same order: a・i・u・e・o.

• あ a — as in "father". い i — as in "machine". う u — as in "flu" (lips relaxed, not rounded). え e — as in "egg". お o — as in "or" (short).
• Say the vowel row out loud right now: あ・い・う・え・お — a, i, u, e, o. That melody repeats through the entire script.

Rows 1–5: あ・か・さ・た・な

Three irregulars in the whole set so far — し shi, ち chi, つ tsu — and they're the ones English speakers pronounce correctly by accident anyway.

Hear them, then drill them

Click any cell to hear it. Then run the quiz until you score 12/15 twice in a row — that's your "done" bar for this chapter.

Your first real words

You can already read these — no kanji, no tricks. Sound each one out:

Twenty-one more letters, two little marks that create 25 extra sounds for free, and the three rules (small っ, ん, long vowels) that make written Japanese match spoken Japanese.

Rows 6–10: は・ま・や・ら・わ

Dakuten ゛and handakuten ゜— 25 sounds for free

Two tiny marks in the top-right corner voice a consonant. You don't learn new shapes — you learn one rule:

Combination sounds: きゃ・きゅ・きょ

An い-column letter plus a small や/ゆ/よ blends into one beat: きゃ kya, しゅ shu, ちょ cho, じゃ ja. Size matters: きや (big や) is ki-ya, two beats; きゃ is kya, one beat.

The three timing rules

• Small っ = a one-beat pause that doubles the next consonant: きって ki-t-te (stamp). Hold your mouth for a beat.
• ん is its own beat: こんにちは = ko-n-ni-chi-wa, five beats.
• Long vowels are written out: おかあさん okaasan (mother), せんせい sensee-ish (the えい combo sounds like a long e), とうきょう tookyoo (both おう combos are long o).

Drill it all

Katakana writes exactly the same 46 sounds as hiragana with different shapes, and Japan uses it for foreign words — which means you already know a huge chunk of katakana vocabulary. コーヒー is just "coffee".

Why bother? Because menus.

Restaurant menus, tech vocabulary, store signs, your own name — katakana is everywhere in modern Japan. Beginners consistently under-study it and then stall reading real text. Give it the same 3–5 days you gave hiragana; the payoff arrives immediately because most katakana words are English in disguise.

The grid, first half

Read the menu already

Drill

Finish the grid, meet the long-vowel dash, and learn the five conversion rules that turn katakana back into the English it came from.

The grid, second half

Decoding loanwords: the five rules

• ー stretches the vowel: カー kaa (car), ビール biiru (beer).
• English L becomes R-row: ホテル hoteru (hotel), サラダ sarada (salad).
• Consonant clusters get vowels inserted (usually u, after t/d it's o): ストレス sutoresu (stress), ベッド beddo (bed).
• V often becomes B: テレビ terebi (TV). TH becomes S/Z: サンキュー.
• New combo sounds for foreign noises: ファ fa, ティ ti, ウェ we, ディ di — small vowels glued on: パーティー paatii (party).

Drill — grid, demons, and real loanwords

You type romaji, the computer makes kana, and a spacebar press turns kana into kanji. Ten minutes of setup, and it quietly reinforces every kana you just learned.

Setup on Windows (2 minutes)

1. Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language → 日本語 (Japanese) → Install. (You can untick "set as display language".)
2. Press Win + Space to switch between English and Japanese keyboards any time.
3. In Japanese mode, type konnichiha → こんにちは appears. Press Space to convert to kanji candidates, Enter to accept.

The typing rules that aren't obvious

Why this matters for the N5 plan

Typing is active recall of kana disguised as a chore — every word you type re-tests you. From this point on, when a drill shows you a word, occasionally type it into a notes file. Also: the JLPT is paper-based, but every dictionary, Anki deck, and website you'll use from now on assumes you can type. Do the setup today; it compounds.

The N5 exam tests roughly 106 kanji. This part teaches all of them in five themed sets, starting with the 22 you'll see on every price tag, clock, and calendar in Japan.

How to learn a kanji (the honest method)

A kanji is not a letter — it's a meaning with (usually) two readings: the on'yomi (used in kanji compounds: 三月 san-gatsu) and the kun'yomi (used alone or with hiragana tails: 三つ mit-tsu). The working method, borrowed from the WaniKani/mnemonic school:

1. Look at the shape and find a picture in it. 一二三 are literally one, two, three strokes. 川 is a river's three streams. 山 is a mountain with three peaks. Sillier stories stick better — make your own.
2. Learn the readings through words, never as a list. Each kanji card below carries its most useful N5 words — drill those and the readings install themselves.
3. Trust recognition. The JLPT never asks you to write a kanji, only to read it. Recognition + reading is the whole game at this level.

The cards — 数字とカレンダー

Where you'll meet them today

The five elements that name the days of the week, the words that slice up a day, and the small cast of humans every N5 sentence talks about.

The weekday system

Japanese weekdays are element + 曜日 (yōbi): 月曜日 Moon-day (Monday), 火曜日 Fire-day (Tuesday), 水曜日 Water-day, 木曜日 Tree-day, 金曜日 Gold-day, 土曜日 Earth-day, 日曜日 Sun-day. Poetic, systematic, and worth the price of five element kanji — which also happen to mean fire, water, wood, gold/money, and earth in hundreds of other words.

The cards — 曜日と時間と人

In the wild

The study-and-action set: the kanji of learning itself, plus the core verbs — go, come, eat, drink, see, hear, read, write, buy. These carry more N5 sentences than any other group.

Verb kanji work differently

Most kanji in this set live inside verbs, where the kanji carries the meaning-root and hiragana carries the conjugation: 食たべる・食たべます・食たべて — the 食 never changes, the tail does. So when you drill these cards, you're really drilling the verbs from JP-04 in their true written form. This is where your kana knowledge and kanji knowledge fuse into actual reading.

The cards — 学びと動き

In the wild

Mountains and rivers, weather, vehicles, and the six direction words — the kanji of every train station sign and every address in the country.

These are the most pictographic of all

This set is where kanji's picture-origin is most visible: 山 is a mountain ridge, 川 flowing water, 田 a rice paddy seen from above, 雨 rain drops under a cloud-roof, 車 a cart seen from above (axle and wheels). Direction pairs come as sets: 上/下 above/below (a mark above vs below a line), 右/左 right/left, 東西南北 the four compass points — 東 (east) is the sun 日 rising behind a tree 木.

The cards — 自然と場所

In the wild

The last N5 set: body parts, animals, and the adjective kanji — plus a handful of high-frequency N4 kanji thrown in early because you'll meet them constantly anyway.

Adjective kanji: the stems of JP-05

Just like verb kanji, adjective kanji are stems with hiragana tails: 高たかい・高たかくない・高たかかった. Drill this set and the adjective chapter's vocabulary snaps into its written form. The body-part set (手足目口耳) pays double: they're all N5 words on their own AND the building blocks of hundreds of later kanji (remember 聞 = ear at the gate).

The cards — 体と形容詞

Checkpoint — the kanji gate

That's the full N5 set plus a head start. From here, every chapter's vocabulary tables become readable the honest way: kanji first, hover only when stuck, romaji off as soon as you dare. When all five KJ chapters hold at 8/10 in both drill modes, the 文字・語彙 section of the exam is substantially yours.

Before the first grammar rule, get the three load-bearing facts straight: Japanese is built from mora, written in three scripts with three different jobs, and glued together by particles — not word order.

The sound system: mora, not syllables

Japanese rhythm is counted in mora — equal beats. Each kana is one beat. とうきょう (Tokyo) is not two syllables; it is four beats: と・う・きょ・う. This matters because three things that trip up learners are all "extra beats":

• Long vowels are two beats. おばさんobasan (aunt) vs おばあさん (grandmother). One extra あ, completely different relative. Same with ビル (building) vs ビール (beer).
• The small っ is a silent beat — a one-beat pause that doubles the next consonant. きて (come!) vs きって (stamp). Your mouth holds position for one beat.
• ん is a full beat of its own. こんにちは is ko・n・ni・chi・wa — five beats.

Three scripts, three jobs

A real sentence braids all three: 私わたしはコーヒーを飲のみます — kanji roots (私, 飲), katakana loanword (コーヒー), hiragana grammar (は, を, みます). Once you see the braid, you can skim a sentence and instantly know where the meaning lives (kanji) and where the grammar lives (hiragana tails).

Readings: why 日 has six pronunciations

Most kanji have at least two readings: the on'yomi (Chinese-derived, used in kanji compounds) and kun'yomi (native, used when the kanji stands alone or with hiragana tails). The rule of thumb that is right ~80% of the time:

• Kanji + kanji → on'yomi. 学生がくせい, 電車でんしゃ, 日本にほん.
• Kanji alone or + hiragana → kun'yomi. 水みず, 食たべる, 高たかい.

Don't memorize reading lists in the abstract — learn readings through vocabulary, which is exactly what every chapter's word set does. After a few hundred words the patterns install themselves and you start guessing new readings correctly.

Sentence shape: the verb anchors the end, particles do the work

English is Subject-Verb-Object and meaning depends on order: "the dog bit the man" ≠ "the man bit the dog". Japanese is verb-final, and everything before the verb is tagged with a particle — a one-syllable label that announces the word's role. Because the labels carry the roles, the order of the labeled blocks barely matters:

Two more structural habits to install on day one: Japanese drops anything obvious from context (subjects, objects — a full sentence can be one verb: 食たべた？ "did (you) eat?"), and it has no articles, no plurals, no future tense — 本ほん is "a book / the book / books", and the non-past tense covers both "I eat" and "I will eat". Context, which the language trusts completely, disambiguates.

The kana, with your ears

You likely know the kana already — the instrument below is for two things: filling gaps fast (click any cell to hear it), and drilling the dakuten/combination rows that slow readers down (が・ぱ・きゃ lines). Make sure katakana is as automatic as hiragana; N-level texts will not wait for you to decode レストラン.

This chapter's vocabulary — the survival forty

Forty concrete nouns you will meet in every chapter from here on. These are deliberately kanji-first: hover for the reading, then drill until reading-recall is automatic. This is the routine for every chapter in the book.

One pattern — X は Y です — gives you introductions, descriptions, opinions, and questions. Master its four forms and the two words that break English brains: は and が.

X は Y です — the equation sentence

The workhorse of early Japanese: "as for X, it is Y."

は is the topic particle — written は but pronounced wa (a historical spelling, like English "knight"). It means "regarding X / as for X". です is the polite copula — "is/am/are". It conjugates through exactly four cells, and this 2×2 grid is the template every predicate in Japanese follows:

じゃ is the spoken contraction of では; in writing and formal speech you'll see ではありません / ではありませんでした — same cells, stiffer register.

Questions: add か, change nothing else

No inversion, no auxiliary "do" — append か and you have a question. Question words (何・なに/なん what, 誰・だれ who, どこ where) sit exactly where their answer would sit:

この・その・あの — the three-way pointing system

English splits space two ways (this/that); Japanese splits it three ways, by whose territory the thing is in:

は vs が — the first pass

Both can mark what looks like a subject, and the difference takes the whole book to fully own — but the day-one version is genuinely simple:

Test yourself with the spotlight trick: が puts the spotlight on what's before it; は puts the spotlight on what's after it. "WHO came?" → spotlight on who → が. "What do you do?" → spotlight on the answer part → は. We'll return to this in JP-08 and JP-15 as sentences get richer.

The politeness dial exists — set it to です・ます for now

Everything in Parts I–II is in the polite です・ます style: correct with strangers, colleagues, shopkeepers, everyone. The casual "plain form" arrives in JP-09 — where you'll discover it's not just casual speech, it's the gear that drives all complex grammar. One dial, learn the polite setting first.

Vocabulary — people & introductions

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — build the sentences

Assemble each sentence from its scrambled pieces. Say it aloud before you click.

Seven one-syllable words that do the work English does with word order and prepositions. Learn each particle's core image, and every sentence in the book becomes parseable.

The case particles, by core image

に vs で — the pin and the stage

Both translate as "in/at", which is exactly why they're the first real particle decision you'll sweat. The distinction is about the verb, not the place:

Time expressions: when に, when nothing

Clock/calendar times take に: 三時さんじに (at 3:00), 月曜日げつようびに (on Monday), 二月にがつに (in February). Relative times take nothing: 今日きょう・明日あした・毎日まいにち・今いま stand bare. Rule of thumb: if you could point to it on a clock or calendar, pin it with に.

の — the possessive chain

AのB reads right-to-left as "B of A", and chains freely:

の also covers material and category: 日本語にほんごの本ほん "a Japanese-language book". When you meet a long のののchain in the wild, parse from the last noun backward — the final noun is always the actual thing.

も — the substitution rule

も means "also", and it replaces は, が, or を (never stacks on them): 私も行きます, not ×私はも. With other particles it stacks after: 東京とうきょうにも行いきます "I'll go to Tokyo too."

Vocabulary — places & movement

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — choose the particle

The instrument below gives you a sentence with a hole in it. Pick the particle, get told exactly why you're right or wrong. Aim for a clean 10.

Every Japanese verb belongs to one of three groups, and once you can name the group, you can conjugate anything the language will ever throw at you. This is the single highest-leverage skill in the book.

The three groups

Textbooks call them Group 1/2/3, う-verbs and る-verbs, or godan/ichidan. Same thing:

The ます line — polite non-past and friends

Take the stem (Group 1: slide final kana to its い-row sound; Group 2: drop る) and attach the polite endings. Like です, it's a 2×2 grid:

Remember: non-past covers present habit and future. 明日あした、行いきます = "I'll go tomorrow." No separate future tense exists, ever. One less thing.

Full sentences now

Note the standard rhythm: topic は → time → place → object を → verb. Not a law (particles carry the roles), but it's the neutral order your ear should expect.

Invitations: ませんか and ましょう

〜ませんか invites ("won't you…?"), 〜ましょう proposes ("let's…"). Both are just the ます line with a different tail — a pattern to get used to: Japanese grammar is overwhelmingly tails on stems.

Conjugate for yourself

The stepper below shows the derivation, kana by kana, for any verb in this book's core list. Watch Group 1 slide and Group 2 snap. Ten minutes here saves ten weeks later.

Vocabulary — 45 core verbs

These verbs cover the bulk of daily life and recur in every later chapter. Group is marked; drill until group-recognition is instant.

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

Japanese adjectives conjugate like verbs — they carry their own tense and negation. There are two clans, and everything depends on telling them apart.

Two clans

Adverbs: く and に

い-adjectives become adverbs with く, な-adjectives with に: 早はやく起おきます (wake early), 静しずかに話はなします (speak quietly). Degree words stack in front: とても (very), ちょっと (a bit), あまり〜ない (not very — needs a negative), 全然ぜんぜん〜ない (not at all — needs a negative).

Liking and wanting are adjectives

Japanese expresses "like", "dislike", "good at", "bad at" with な-adjectives, and the liked thing takes が:

This は…が… "double subject" shape (topic + spotlight) is everywhere in Japanese — file it now, we'll lean on it hard in JP-08 and JP-15.

Vocabulary — 45 core adjectives

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — conjugate & choose

Japanese numbers are beautifully regular — until you attach them to things, at which point sound changes and counter words turn arithmetic into phonology. Drill it now; it never gets drilled by accident.

The number system: build from 14 pieces

Learn 1–10, then 百・千・万, and you can say any number to 99,999,999. It's purely positional: 342 = 三百四十二 "three-hundred four-ten two".

Time

Counters: numbers must wear a uniform

You can't count bare in Japanese — the number takes a suffix that classifies the shape/type of the thing. The essential seven:

Word order: ビールを二本にほん買かいました — the counter floats after the particle, before the verb. When you don't know the right counter, 〜つ (or 〜個) is the socially acceptable fallback for objects.

Drill the machine

The trainer below throws random numbers, prices, times and counter questions at you, and shows the reading with all sound changes worked out. This is pure reps territory — five minutes a day for two weeks and it's yours for life.

Vocabulary — time words

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

One conjugation unlocks requests, permission, prohibition, ongoing actions, and chaining sentences. If you drill exactly one thing from Part II, drill this.

Formation: the て song

Group 2 is trivial: drop る, add て (食べる→食べて). Group 3: する→して, 来る→来きて. Group 1 splits by the final kana — this is the table generations of students have chanted:

Drill it until it's reflex — the stepper shows every derivation:

What て buys you

1. Requests — てください

2. Ongoing action & ongoing states — ている

ている covers both "-ing" and "state resulting from a change". Verbs of instantaneous change (結婚する・住すむ・知しる・持もつ) use ている for the state: 知っています = "I know", 東京に住んでいます = "I live in Tokyo". Which flavor applies is a property of the verb — your vocab tables note the state-verbs.

3. Permission and prohibition

4. Chaining actions — the "and then" glue

Vocabulary — the daily routine

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — て-form under fire

"There is" splits in two based on whether the thing breathes. Add position words and から/まで, and you can describe where anything is — the second most useful skill for surviving Japan.

ある for things, いる for the living

The pattern is PLACE に THING が あります/います. Flip it to say where something is: トイレは二階にかいにあります "The toilet is on the second floor" — known thing becomes は-topic, place keeps its に.

The position words

Position words are nouns, connected with の: AのB に = "at the B of A".

から・まで — from and until

から/まで work for both space and time, and attach directly to the noun. You now have the full toolkit for directions, schedules, and describing any scene.

Vocabulary — home & everyday objects

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — describe the scene

You learned です・ます first for politeness. Now meet the forms underneath — not "casual slang" but the gears every complex sentence is built from.

The four plain forms

Three mechanical facts: the た-form is the て-form with た (書いて→書いた, 飲んで→飲んだ — the same sound-change table, for free). The negative ない attaches to the あ-row for Group 1 (書く→書か+ない), with one wrinkle: う-ending verbs go to わ (買う→買わない). And ない itself conjugates like an い-adjective (なかった), which is why past-negative looks the way it does.

Why plain form matters more than politeness

Plain form is what goes inside larger structures. Politeness lives only at the very end of a sentence; everything embedded within is plain. Three patterns you can use immediately:

と思おもいます — I think that…

と言いいました — said that…

〜たことがあります — have you ever…

Casual speech, briefly

Between friends, the plain form IS the sentence: 食べる？ "eating?" — 食べた "ate." Questions drop か and just rise in pitch; だ replaces です (but is usually dropped by women and often by everyone: これ、おいしいね). Sentence-final ね seeks agreement ("right?"), よ asserts new info ("I'm telling you"). Don't practice casual on strangers yet — but recognize it, because all native media runs on it.

Vocabulary — food & drink

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — plain-form gymnastics

Single sentences become paragraphs. Cause, contrast, and sequence — plus んです, the "explanation mode" that makes your Japanese suddenly sound human.

Because: から and ので

Both mean "because", and the reason comes first (Japanese states cause before effect — reverse of the English default). Nuance: から is direct, subjective; ので is softer, more objective — preferred for excuses and polite requests. Grammar detail: ので needs な after nouns and な-adjectives (雨なので・便利なので); から takes だ (雨だから).

But: が and けど

Sentence-joining が (formal) and けど (everyday) both mean "but" — and both also serve as a soft connector that isn't adversative at all, just clearing the throat before the main point. Half of real conversations start with 〜ですけど…

Sentence starters

Incomplete lists: や and とか

と lists exhaustively ("A and B, that's all"); や lists by example ("A and B, among others"): 寿司すしやラーメンを食たべました "I ate sushi, ramen, and such." とか is its casual cousin.

んです — explanation mode

Add んです (plain form + んです; nouns/な-adj insert な) and a bare statement becomes an explanation — offering or seeking background:

Vocabulary — feelings & character

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — connect the clauses

A third of the JLPT is listening, and the single most common N5 listening task is catching a number, a time, or a price at native speed. This gym generates infinite practice.

How to train

The instrument speaks; you pick what you heard. No text appears until you answer — that's the point. Numbers are where every learner's ear lags their eye, because the sound changes (さんびゃく、ろっぴゃく、いっぷん) that you learned in JP-06 arrive fused at full speed. Fifteen minutes here, three days in a row, and the fog lifts noticeably.

Ear-training rules

• No replays on the first guess. The exam plays everything once. Train the way you'll fight.
• Say what you heard aloud before answering. Shadowing the audio doubles the encoding and builds your own pronunciation for free.
• Wrong twice on the same pattern? Go re-run the number trainer in JP-06 with your eyes open, then come back.

Two lines of conversation, one question — the exact shape of the JLPT's 課題理解 listening tasks, built from grammar you already own.

The N5 listening formula

Almost every N5 dialogue question follows one script: a situation is named, two people exchange 2–4 short lines, and the question asks what will the person do / where / when / which one. The traps are always the same three: a corrected statement (「じゃあ、三時？」「いいえ、四時です」— the answer is the correction), a declined offer, or two similar numbers. Listen for the second mention of anything — corrections come second.

After each dialogue

Replay it (allowed here, not on question one) and read along with the revealed transcript, aloud. This turns every quiz item into shadowing material. Ten dialogues shadowed daily is a genuine listening course in miniature.

Station announcements, classroom instructions, shop keigo — the ambient Japanese of daily life, drilled by ear so it stops being noise.

Why phrase-listening is its own skill

These phrases arrive as single fused sounds, not word-by-word: いらっしゃいませ, もういちどおねがいします, でんしゃがまいります. You don't parse them — you recognize them whole, like song hooks. The JLPT tests a set called 即時応答 ("instant response"): you hear a phrase and pick the natural reply. The drill below mixes both: what does it mean, and what do you say back.

N5 reading starts with 100-character texts: a store's hours, a note on a door, a friend's message. Short, real, and exactly what these five texts train.

The N5 reading method

Read the text once without stopping, even where you're lost. Then answer. Then hover the furigana and re-read. The exam gives you ~1 minute per short text; training your tolerance for partial understanding IS the skill. Romaji is on for these if you need it — but try each text kanji-first; every kanji here is from the KJ chapters.

テキスト 1 — 店の看板

テキスト 2 — ドアのメモ

テキスト 3 — 駅のお知らせ

テキスト 4 — 友達からのメッセージ

テキスト 5 — 教室で

Comprehension check

The 4–6 sentence passage: a self-introduction, someone's daily routine, a postcard. The N5 exam's medium-length texts, at exam difficulty.

読み物 1 — 自己紹介

読み物 2 — 山田さんの一日

読み物 3 — はがき

Comprehension check

Two texts slightly above exam level. If these feel merely "hard" rather than impossible, you are ready for the real thing — examiners under-shoot what you trained on.

読み物 1 — メール

読み物 2 — 小さな話

Comprehension check

A drill-only chapter. No new grammar — just the four verb forms N5 tests, cycled until your mouth answers before your brain does.

The circuit

Run each station below to 8/10. The quiz button inside the stepper generates fresh questions every run, so this chapter never wears out. Order matters — it's easiest to hardest:

1. ます-form (polite line) — the form every N5 listening track speaks in.
2. て-form — requests, permissions, and the glue of every compound tense.
3. Plain past た — free if your て-form is solid (same sound rules).
4. Plain negative ない — watch the う→わ verbs (買う→買わない).

Station 1 & 2 — ます and て

Station 3 & 4 — た and ない

Everything in this book, sequenced into ten weeks. Follow it honestly at 60–90 minutes a day and the exam becomes a formality.

The plan

Coverage map — is every pattern covered?

Beyond this file

Three additions make the plan stronger, all free: Tofugu's roadmap for method sanity-checks; official JLPT sample questions (jlpt.jp) in week 9; and any show you love with Japanese audio, fifteen minutes daily from week 4. If you have Genki I, the chips on every chapter tell you which lesson to read alongside.

Thirty questions sampled from everything you've studied, scored by section like the real exam. Pass bar: 60%. The real N5 pass bar is lower — you're training with a heavier sword.

Exam-day mechanics (read once)

• The real N5 is 90 minutes, three timed sections (official structure, jlpt.jp): Language Knowledge — Vocabulary 20 min; Language Knowledge — Grammar & Reading 40 min; Listening 30 min. Scored 0–180; pass is ~80/180 and you must clear each section\u2019s minimum — one zeroed section fails you regardless of total.
• Never leave a blank. No penalty for guessing. Eliminate one option, guess from three.
• Reading section: read the question first, then hunt the text for its answer. N5 texts are short enough to scan.
• Listening: the answer is usually the second version of any repeated detail (corrections!). Mark and move on — the next track waits for no one.

The mock

After each mock

Your section scores are the diagnosis: vocab low → Dojo twice daily for a week; grammar low → re-run the quiz of the specific chapters you missed (the mock names them); reading low → re-read RD passages for speed; listening low → LN-01 daily. Then mock again in 48 hours. Two consecutive passes above 70% and you should register for the real thing — momentum is a resource, spend it. 頑張がんばって！

Desire, plans, and "let's" — the grammar of having a will of your own, plus the strange rule about other people's feelings.

たい — wanting to do

Verb stem (the ます-stem) + たい, and the result conjugates as an い-adjective:

The object may take を or が: 水が飲みたい is slightly more idiomatic than 水を飲みたい. For things rather than actions, use ほしい (also an い-adjective): 新あたらしいパソコンがほしいです "I want a new computer."

つもり — plans, and the volitional — "let's/shall I"

The plain volitional form ("let's…" to yourself or peers) is: Group 1 → お-row + う (行く→行こう・飲む→飲もう); Group 2 → よう (食べよう); する→しよう, 来る→来こよう. Add と思っています and you get the everyday way to state intentions:

たり〜たりする — doing things like…

Like や for nouns, たり lists actions non-exhaustively. Common error: forgetting the final する, which carries the tense.

Vocabulary — shopping & money

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習

Ability, necessity, and permission — the modal triangle that turns you from a describer of events into a negotiator of them.

The potential form — "can"

Group 1: slide to え-row + る (書く→書ける・飲む→飲める). Group 2: られる (食べられる — colloquially 食べれる, the famous "ら抜き"). する→できる, 来る→来られる. The result is a Group 2 verb, and the object usually switches を→が:

Alternative: dictionary form + ことができる (泳ぐことができます) — stiffer, common in writing.

Must: the なければ family

"Must" in Japanese is literally "if you don't do it, it won't do" — negative stem + a conditional + a bad-outcome word. The full form and its street versions:

"Don't have to" is 〜なくてもいいです ("it's fine even not doing"): 明日あしたは来こなくてもいいですよ "You don't need to come tomorrow." Compare the permission/prohibition pair from JP-07 — the whole modal system is just て/なくて + もいい/はいけない combinations.

Too much, easy, hard — stem suffixes

All three attach to the ます-stem and conjugate as their ending suggests (すぎる as a Group 2 verb, やすい/にくい as い-adjectives). Stems are sockets; suffixes are plugs.

Vocabulary — work & study

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習

Three verbs for "give/receive" that encode whose side you're on. English doesn't have this axis at all — which is exactly why it needs deliberate drilling.

The triangle

The favor versions: 〜てあげる・〜てくれる・〜てもらう

Hinge any verb with て into the triangle and actions become favors — with the same directionality:

てくれる is how gratitude enters ordinary sentences — dropping it makes you sound oddly entitled ("the teacher taught me" as a cold fact). Politeness upgrades: あげる→さしあげる, くれる→くださる, もらう→いただく (bank these; they return in the keigo chapter).

Family words: two sets

Humble set for your own family when talking to others (父ちち・母はは・兄あに・姉あね); honorific set for other people's (お父とうさん・お母かあさん・お兄にいさん・お姉ねえさん). Same うち/そと camera as the giving verbs — your side gets humble words, their side gets raised words. (Within the family, everyone uses the honorific set as address: kids call their own mom お母さん.)

Vocabulary — family & people

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — pick the right verb

Japanese has no "-er" or "-est". Comparison is done with word order and two nouns — ほう (side) and いちばん (number one) — plus なる, the verb of change that English keeps splitting into a dozen phrases.

A より B — comparing two

Asking which of two: コーヒーとお茶と、どちらが好きですか — answer with 〜のほうが. Note there's no change to the adjective itself; "faster" is just 速い with a より somewhere in the sentence.

いちばん — superlatives

Question form: スポーツの中なかで何なにが一番好きですか "Among sports, which do you like best?" — the category takes (の中)で.

なる — the verb of becoming

English says get cold, turn red, go bad, become a doctor, grow stronger. Japanese says なる for all of it, with the adverb forms from JP-05:

Before and after: 前に・後で

Note the tense logic: 前に always takes dictionary form (the act hasn't happened yet from the clause's viewpoint), 後で always takes た-form (it has). Japanese subclause tense is relative, not absolute — a theme that will matter a lot in reading.

Vocabulary — weather, seasons & nature

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習

Japanese has no "who/which/that". A whole sentence simply parks in front of a noun. This is the point where reading real Japanese either clicks or collapses — make it click.

The mechanism

Put a plain-form sentence directly before a noun, and it modifies that noun. No pronoun, no comma, no glue:

Inside the bracket, everything is plain form (even in a polite sentence), and the subject of the clause takes が or の, never は: [友達ともだちが作つくった]ケーキ "the cake my friend made". は marks main-sentence topics only — this is the sharpest は/が rule there is, and it's mechanical.

How to read long sentences without drowning

Japanese noun phrases grow leftward. The survival algorithm, which you should practice consciously for the next month:

1. Find the particle after a noun chunk (は・が・を・に…). Everything before it up to the previous particle-boundary is one box.
2. If a box seems too long, find its final noun — that's the real cargo; everything before it inside the box is decoration.
3. The main verb is at the very end. Read the boxes, then the verb, then re-read once. Two passes is normal at this stage; one pass comes with volume.

こと and の — turning verbs into nouns

To use a whole action as a noun ("swimming is fun"), nominalize with の or こと:

Rough division: の for direct perception and likes (見るのが・聞くのが・〜のが好き/上手), こと for abstract statements and before です. When in doubt in speech, の.

Vocabulary — body & health

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — parse the brackets

Four ways to say "if", each with its own logic. Learners agonize over choosing; the secret is that たら covers 80% and the other three have one sharp job each.

The four, by their sharp job

Formation: と takes plain non-past + と. ば: Group 1 え-row + ば (行けば), Group 2 れば (食べれば), い-adj くければ→ければ (安ければ), noun/な-adj なら(ば). たら: た-form + ら (行ったら・安かったら・雨だったら). なら: plain form or noun + なら.

The two rules that prevent 90% of errors

Reading-comprehension bonus: と in narrative

In written Japanese, 〜と、 often means "and then (I discovered)": ドアを開あけると、猫ねこがいた "When I opened the door, there was a cat." Fiction runs on this と — recognize it and short stories become readable.

Vocabulary — travel & transport

Genki word list — the aligned lesson’s own vocabulary

練習 — pick the conditional

You've passed through N5. This is the honest checkpoint before the N3 climb: what N4 actually adds, a mock that samples it, and a frank note on what this book gives you here versus what you must add.

What N4 is, concretely

N4 roughly doubles N5: about 300 kanji (up from ~106), 1,500 words (up from ~800), and the grammar in chapters JP-11 through JP-21 — potential, giving/receiving, conditionals, passive, causative, and the evidential system (そう・よう・らしい). If you can read the JP-11–21 example sentences without the furigana and pass the mock below, you are genuinely at the N4 door.

The N4 mock

Twenty-five questions sampled from everything in Parts II–IV — vocabulary, the harder grammar, and the N3-bridge reading. Same rules as the N5 mock: no blanks, read the question first, 60% is the working bar.

Reading at N4 speed

The timed reading gym below pulls short unseen texts and clocks you. N4 reading is mostly N5 reading at pace — the goal is under a minute per short text, with comprehension intact.

Two conjugations that reorganize who does what to whom — and one of them carries an emotional payload English passives don't have.

The passive — れる/られる

Group 1: あ-row + れる (書く→書かれる・読む→読まれる). Group 2: られる (食べられる — yes, identical to the potential; context disambiguates). する→される, 来る→来られる. The doer takes に:

The suffering passive

Japanese also passivizes intransitive verbs to mean "this happened AND it hurt me" — a structure with no English equivalent:

The causative — せる/させる

Group 1: あ-row + せる (書かせる), Group 2: させる (食べさせる), する→させる, 来る→来させる. Meaning splits on the causee's will:

The polite request 〜させてください "please let me…" is the causative's most useful form: 考かんがえさせてください "let me think about it" — essential business Japanese.

Causative-passive: made to do

Vocabulary — society & incidents

練習

Japanese grammatically distinguishes what you saw, what you infer, and what you were told. English lets "seems" blur it all; Japanese won't — and the JLPT tests exactly this.

The evidence system

Bonus uses: Xらしい after a noun means "true to X's nature" (男おとこらしい "manly", 春はるらしい天気てんき "properly spring-like weather"). Xのようだ／Xみたい after a noun means "like X" (夢ゆめのようだ "like a dream").

〜がる — displaying feelings

The third-person rule from JP-11 completes here: adjective stem + がる = "shows signs of". 恥はずかしがる "act embarrassed", 怖こわがっている "is (visibly) scared". Emotion adjectives about third parties want がる, ようだ, or らしい — direct statement is reserved for your own chest.

Vocabulary — communication & judgment

練習 — whose evidence?

Not "extra polite words" but a system: raise the other side, lower your side, polish the surface. Learn the dozen special verbs and the two templates, and service-counter Japan opens up.

Three modes

The special verbs — the real vocabulary of keigo

Survival keigo — what you'll actually hear

Konbini and restaurant staff speak a ritualized keigo. Decode kit: いらっしゃいませ (welcome), 〜でございます (super-polite です), お待またせいたしました (sorry to keep you waiting), 少々しょうしょうお待ちください (one moment please), 〜てもよろしいでしょうか (may I…). You need to produce very little of this — but recognizing it instantly is an N3 listening requirement and a daily-life one.

Vocabulary — office & service situations

練習 — raise or lower?

開く and 開ける. 出る and 出す. Japanese verbs come in door-opens/I-open-door couples, and choosing the wrong twin is the most persistent intermediate error there is.

The concept

English recycles one verb ("the door opens / I open the door"); Japanese gives each role its own verb. There are recurring sound patterns (〜aru intransitive / 〜eru transitive: 閉まる/閉める・止まる/止める; 〜eru intransitive / 〜su transitive: 出る/出す・消える/消す) but no full rule — the pairs are vocabulary, and this chapter's table IS the vocabulary set.

Why it matters: ている vs てある, and blame

The triad: 自動詞+ている = neutral state; 他動詞+てある = state with intent behind it; 他動詞+ておく = preparation. Japanese speakers encode agency and intention here without thinking; when you say ×お金が落とした instead of お金を落とした, natives hear grammar pain.

The pair table & matcher

Twenty core pairs, drilled both directions. This is pure memorization with pattern support — the matcher below never gets old at parties. (Lie: it does. But it works.)

Vocabulary — the pairs as words

Where English says "just", "while", "about to", Japanese has a precision toolkit for locating an action on its own timeline. N3 reading leans on these constantly.

ところ — the freeze-frame

ところ ("place") after a verb pinpoints where on the action's timeline you are — the tense of the verb before it does the aiming:

ばかり — "just did" and "nothing but"

ながら — two actions, one body

うちに & 間（あいだ）— windows of time

てしまう — completion and regret

Two flavors, disambiguated by context: clean completion ("read the whole thing") and irreversible mistake ("went and deleted it"). The contraction ちゃった is overwhelmingly the regret flavor in speech.

ていく・てくる — change with a direction

てくる = change flowing toward the present; ていく = change flowing onward from it. The camera from JP-13, applied to time. Once you see it, half of N3 reading passages' final paragraphs (which love 〜ていくだろう) become transparent.

Vocabulary — time & change

練習

The first sweep of true N3 patterns: doing things so that, to the extent that, deciding and becoming. Each is small; together they're the connective tissue of adult Japanese.

Purpose: ために vs ように

Rule of thumb: if the verb before it is something you decide to do → ために. If it's a state you hope results (できる, わかる, 忘れない…) → ように. ために after a noun is "for the sake of": 家族かぞくのために.

ようにする・ようになる・ことにする・ことになる

The four-cell grid every N3 exam probes. する = someone decides; なる = the world shifts:

Extent: ば〜ほど, ほど, くらい

Noun + ほど with negative = "not as … as": 今年ことしは去年きょねんほど寒さむくない "this year isn't as cold as last."

Viewpoint markers: にとって・について・に対して

Vocabulary — abstract nouns I

練習 — the battery, live-fire

はず, べき, わけ — three flavors of "should" that English merges and Japanese splits by whether the source is logic, morality, or explanation.

The three "should"s

The わけ family — negation's minefield

Cause and credit: おかげで・せいで・ため（に）

ため(に) is the neutral, written-register cause: 事故じこのため、遅おくれています — the version you'll hear in station announcements. Same word as purpose-ために; tense and context split them (past/noun-の + ため = cause).

Probability dial: かもしれない → でしょう → に違いない

Calibrate your certainty: かもしれない "might" (~30%) → でしょう／だろう "probably" (~70%) → に違ちがいない "must be" (~95%, technically N2 but it belongs in this set). All attach to plain form. Weather reports live at でしょう; detectives live at に違いない.

Vocabulary — opinion & reasoning

練習

Everything so far, integrated. Read each passage twice — once peeking at nothing, once checking readings — then take the comprehension quiz. This is what the JLPT actually feels like.

How to train here

1. First pass, no furigana: read for gist. Mark (mentally) where you stumbled.
2. Second pass: hover the stumbles. Say each repaired sentence aloud once.
3. Quiz. Then — the step everyone skips — read it one final time at full speed. That last pass is where reading speed is actually built.

読み物 1 — 自己紹介

読み物 2 — お知らせ

Notice the register: お住まいの皆様, ご不便をおかけします, お使いいただけます — this is JP-19's keigo doing its most common real-world job: notices. Every announcement in Japan is written exactly like this one.

読み物 3 — 意見文

This is the N3 essay voice: plain だ-style, そうだ hearsay, し-listing, ば〜ほど, and the soft rhetorical close のではないだろうか. You will meet this exact voice on every JLPT reading section from N3 up.

Comprehension check

Vocabulary — from the passages

Newspapers, reports, and Wikipedia are written in a register you've barely met. It's not harder — it's a small set of substitutions. Learn the mapping and formal text unlocks overnight.

The である style

Formal writing replaces です/だ with である (negative: ではない, past: であった/だった). It's not politer — it's objective, the voice of essays, theses, and encyclopedias:

Whole-register substitution table — reading fluency here is mostly running these mappings automatically:

Headline grammar — the compressed dialect

Headlines drop particles, drop です/する, and end on nouns (体言止たいげんどめ):

Decode kit for the five most compressed headline signals: へ (planned), か (possibly/suspected), も (even/also, hinting surprise), で (cause: 地震で = because of the quake), verbless noun endings (発表 = "announces"). Reading five headlines a day with this kit is the single cheapest N2 reading habit.

漢語 density — why formal text feels harder

Written Japanese swaps native verbs for kanji-compound + する verbs: 調べる→調査ちょうさする, 使う→使用しようする, 始まる→開始かいしする. The meaning is identical; the texture is denser. Your kanji knowledge is the cheat code here — 調査 is transparent if you know 調 and 査. This chapter's vocab set is exactly these paired swaps, and after it, newspaper sentences stop feeling like walls.

Vocabulary — news & formal pairs

練習 — translate the register

The patterns that let a text say "as X progressed, Y…; on the one hand…; compared with…" — the skeleton of every analytical paragraph you'll read from now on.

Change in tandem: につれて・に伴って・とともに

All three take a change-word before them and a change-clause after. につれて is gradual drift, に伴って is formal accompaniment, とともに doubles as plain "together with". If both clauses don't involve change, none of these fit — that's the exam trap.

Contrast: 一方（で）・反面・のに対して

Related but different: 〜一方いっぽうだ sentence-finally means "keeps moving in one direction only": 物価ぶっかは上あがる一方だ "prices just keep rising."

Counter-expectation: わりに・くせに・ものの

Scope additions: ばかりでなく・はもちろん・に限かぎらず

All three mean "not just X" — ばかりでなく neutral, はもちろん "X goes without saying", に限らず "not limited to X" (formal). Second clause almost always carries a も.

Vocabulary — society & economy

練習

"Can't help but", "liable to", "nothing but" — the grammar of pressure and limits. These patterns are rare in speech and everywhere in editorials, which is exactly why they gatekeep N2.

Inevitability & risk

The もの family

Simultaneity with tension: つつ・つつある

Timing triggers: 次第・たとたん・か〜ないかのうちに

Vocabulary — argument & policy

練習

The layer that separates textbook Japanese from real Japanese: sound-words with grammar of their own, noun-verb marriages you can't divorce, and the three vocabulary strata.

Onomatopoeia is a grammar, not a garnish

Japanese has thousands of sound/state words (擬音語 sound-mimicking, 擬態語 state-mimicking), and they follow rules: reduplication (ドキドキ), 〜っと forms (さっと), and they usually hook into sentences with と or する:

Collocations — the 気 economy and friends

Japanese runs on noun+verb set phrases where the verb is not guessable. The 気 family alone is daily-conversation currency:

Same story with 〜を取とる・〜がかかる・〜を引ひく: 電話をかける, 風邪を引く, 時間がかかる, メモを取る. Learn the marriage, never just the noun — every vocab table from here on gives collocation examples in the drill.

The three strata — 和語・漢語・外来語

Most concepts exist in three flavors: native (宿やど), Sino-Japanese (旅館りょかん), Western loan (ホテル) — with rising formality/technicality from 和語 to 漢語, and 外来語 marking modernity. Same with 取り消す／キャンセル／解約. Choosing the stratum IS the style: emails to clients run 漢語-heavy, chats with friends run 和語-heavy. When two words "mean the same thing", stratum is usually the difference.

Vocabulary — onomatopoeia & set phrases

練習

Longer, denser, opinionated — the register of the actual N2 exam and of every column you'll read after it. Same three-pass protocol as JP-24; expect the first pass to hurt a little. That's the workout.

読み物 1 — 「便利」の代償だいしょう

読み物 2 — 社内しゃないメール

This is the full corporate stack in one mail: 各位, さて as topic-shifter, いたします humble forms, かねます as the polite "can't", 次第, ございましたら. Nothing here is decoration — every phrase is load-bearing convention, and N2 listening/reading assumes you parse it at a glance.

Comprehension check

Vocabulary — from the passages

This book took you from zero to the N2 doorway. What carries you through it is volume — here is exactly how to structure that volume, and how to keep this book working for you.

The honest map

Grammar-wise, you now hold everything N3 tests and the core of N2. What remains is not new machinery — it's mileage: thousands more words met in context, hundreds of hours of listening, and reading speed. The gap between "knows the grammar" and "passes N2" is almost entirely reps, which is good news: reps are schedulable.

The weekly template (fits around a job)

SRS: your vocabulary flywheel

This book gave you ~1,200 words with readings — the core. To reach N2's ~6,000, add a spaced-repetition system (Anki with a core N3/N2 deck, or WaniKani if you want kanji-reading reinforcement structured for you). Rules that keep SRS from eating your life: 20 new cards/day maximum, reviews before new cards, and every word you miss twice in the Dojo goes into your deck manually — self-harvested cards stick better than any pre-made deck.

Companion resources (the short list)

• Tofugu — Learn Japanese roadmap — the philosophy this book's onboarding borrows: know ~80% of anything before you study it, and front-load kanji+vocab so grammar never hurts.
• WaniKani — kanji + vocabulary SRS with radical mnemonics; the strongest complement to this book if you want your kanji readings drilled on autopilot.
• Genki I & II — every chapter up to JP-21 carries a Genki chip; use Genki's dialogues and workbook as your written-practice layer for the same grammar.
• NHK News Web Easy — furigana news; your first "real Japanese" from Part IV onward.
• Tadoku graded readers — free leveled fiction for reading volume.

The exam itself

• N3 first, as a checkpoint — it's cheap calibration for the N2 attempt, and passing it funds motivation for the long N2 grind.
• 読解 strategy: read the question before the passage; the JLPT hides answers behind paraphrase, so match meaning, not words. Your JP-22/23/26/27 batteries are precisely the paraphrase inventory.
• 聴解 strategy: answers hinge on reversals — けど、やっぱり、ということで. Train your ear to perk up at contrast markers; the correct answer usually lives after the last one.
• Timing: reading is the section people fail on time, not knowledge. Your daily three-pass gym habit is the fix — keep it.

Keep the book alive

The Dojo never expires: with all 31 chapters done, it drills the full 1,200-word pool — five minutes of maintenance a day. Reset any chapter's "done" state to pull it out of rotation for focused review. Re-read the grammar batteries (JP-22, 23, 26, 27) monthly; they compress at each pass. And when you pass through the gate — 合格ごうかく — the book's last service is reference: the tables don't age.

The final drill

Everything, all chapters, no mercy. This is the same instrument as the Dojo, but it always uses the complete vocabulary pool — your graduation exam, repeatable forever:

継続けいぞくは力ちからなり。— 門もんはいつも開あいている。

Persistence is power. The gate is always open.