JLPT N5 in 12 weeks

Thirty to forty minutes a day for twelve weeks, and everything you need is on this site, free, in the order below. This is not a promise about the exam — you will still need to practise listening elsewhere, and a test is a test. It is a promise about the material: finish this plan and you can read and write every hiragana and katakana, the 80 N5 kanji, the 20 grammar points, and about 600 words, and you will have read 20 real passages that use nothing else.

What the plan assumes

That you start from nothing. That you can print, or at least open a sheet and write on paper beside it. That you will do a little every day rather than a lot on Sunday — the plan is written in weeks, but the sheets are written in days, and the row-by-row order of the kana levels only works if the rows are days apart, not hours. About 46 hours in all.

The numbers below are the site's own: 50 hiragana units, 50 katakana units, 16 kanji units (13 sets plus their reviews), 5 grammar units, 30 vocabulary sets and 20 reading passages — 121 numbered units on the course page, where you can tick them off as you go. The page remembers your ticks in this browser; nothing is sent anywhere.

The twelve weeks

Week	Focus	Course units	Alongside	Min / day
1	Hiragana, first half	A1–A25	Practice: real words 1–20, confusable pairs 1	30
2	Hiragana, second half	A26–A50	Practice: real words 21–40, yōon 1–2, confusable pairs 2	30
3	Katakana, first half	B1–B25	Practice: loanwords 1–20	30
4	Katakana, second half	B26–B50	Practice: loanwords 21–40, confusable pairs シ/ツソ/ン	30
5	Kanji: numbers, days, time	C1–C6	Vocabulary V1–V5 · Reading R1–R2	35
6	Kanji: people, places, nature	C7–C12	Vocabulary V6–V10 · Reading R3–R5	35
7	Kanji: verbs and words	C13–C16	Vocabulary V11–V15 · Reading R6–R8	35
8	Grammar: particles, です・ます	D1–D3	Vocabulary V16–V20 · Reading R9–R11	35
9	Grammar: adjectives, counters, て-form	D4–D5	Vocabulary V21–V25 · Reading R12–R14	35
10	Vocabulary and reading	—	Vocabulary V26–V30 · Reading R15–R17	30
11	Reading, and the recall pages	—	Reading R18–R20 · redo the recall page (p. 2) of every vocabulary set	30
12	Review everything, timed	A50, B50, every C and D review	Reading R15–R20 again, without the vocabulary box	40

Week by week

Week 1 — Hiragana, first half. Trace, match, write — one row a day. The row order is the ladder's; do not jump ahead to the dakuten rows.

Week 2 — Hiragana, second half. The reviews in this stretch (あ–な, は–ん, the dakuten rows, all 46) are the test. If A50 is not clean, spend two more days here — nothing later works without it.

Week 3 — Katakana, first half. Same sounds, new shapes, so it goes faster than week 1. Say each loanword aloud before you write it — you already know the word.

Week 4 — Katakana, second half. From here on, everything is in kana you can read. Print the two blank genkōyōshi sheets; you will use them for the rest of the plan.

Week 5 — Kanji: numbers, days, time. The first kanji sets are the numbers and the days — the ones you will see on every receipt and timetable. Do the review unit when it comes; do not skip it.

Week 6 — Kanji: people, places, nature. The vocabulary sets are chosen to use these kanji. Read the passage after the kanji set it leans on, not before.

Week 7 — Kanji: verbs and words. All 80 kanji are now behind you. The final C review is 36 items in both directions; a score under 30 means redo the sets you missed, not the review.

Week 8 — Grammar: particles, です・ます. Twenty patterns in four sheets. Each sheet's example sentences use only kanji you know — read them aloud, then write two of your own on genkōyōshi.

Week 9 — Grammar: adjectives, counters, て-form. The て-form sheet is the one people rush. It is the hinge of every request and every sequence of actions; give it two days.

Week 10 — Vocabulary and reading. The last vocabulary sets are the adverbs and connectors — the words that turn sentences into paragraphs, which is what band 3–4 reading is.

Week 11 — Reading, and the recall pages. Print only page 2 of each vocabulary set and do it cold. Anything you cannot produce goes on a list; that list is week 12.

Week 12 — Review everything, timed. Reprint the review units and do them against a clock: a kana review in under three minutes, a kanji review in under ten. Then the hiragana and katakana charts from memory on blank paper.

Where each thing lives

Hiragana, Level A — 50 units, plus 10 practice sheets (real words, yōon, confusable pairs, blank genkōyōshi).
Katakana, Level B — 50 units, plus 8 practice sheets of loanwords and pairs.
N5 kanji, Level C — 80 kanji in 13 sets that belong together, with review units that ask for them back.
N5 grammar, Level D — 20 patterns in 4 sheets, each with the formation rule and three example sentences.
N5 vocabulary — 600 words in 30 sets, two pages each; page 1 is page 2's answer key.
N5 reading — 20 passages, 65 to 205 characters, only the 80 kanji, answers and English on page 2.

What this site does not have

Listening. The N5 exam is roughly a third listening, and a print-first site cannot teach it. The official JLPT sample questions include audio, and any beginner podcast or textbook CD will do the job that these sheets do for reading; give it fifteen minutes a day from week 8. The plan above also does not include exam technique — the marked-answer-sheet, the time limits — which is worth one afternoon with an official sample paper in the last week, and no more.

If twelve weeks is too fast

Double it. Every week above becomes two, with the second week of each pair spent on the review units and page 2 of the vocabulary sets. Nothing else changes, because the order is the thing, not the pace. If it is too slow, do not compress the kana weeks — they are the ones the rest depends on — compress weeks 10 and 11 into one.

After N5

The N4 plan picks up exactly here: sixteen weeks, 158 kanji, 50 patterns, 800 words, and passages that are notices and emails rather than diaries.

Everything linked here is CC BY-SA 4.0: print it, copy it, hand it to a class. The same course, bound in order with answer keys, is also a book.