Reading (JLPT N3)
20 passages · 7,770 characters · CC BY-SA 4.0 · EN
Twenty passages after the N4 twenty, written for this site. Two things change at this level. The text is no longer spaced between words — that crutch goes, because printed Japanese has no spaces — and the pieces are the kinds of thing you actually meet: a notice about a water cut, an email moving a meeting, a race entry sheet, an interview with a baker, an argument about whether anyone really has no time to read. They use only the 589 kanji of Level C, Level E and Level G, the grammar of N3 — 〜わけではない, 〜に違いない, 〜をめぐって, passive and causative — and mostly the N3 word list. Anything else is in kana.
Two printed pages each: the text with furigana, the words worth knowing and four questions; then the answers, the English, and the passage's kanji with a line to write each.
★☆☆☆ Everyday accounts
A late train, a morning habit, a puncture, a cooking class, choosing a present — 280 to 340 characters, written the way an adult writes them.
★★☆☆ Notices, email and essays
A water-cut notice on the board, a business email changing a meeting, a race entry sheet, an essay on greetings, a call for volunteers — 340 to 420 characters.
★★★☆ Memoir and opinion
Summers at a grandmother's house, working from home, getting lost abroad, a town's recycling, the day someone changed jobs — 400 to 480 characters.
★★★★ Interviews, guides and argument
A baker interviewed, what to do in an earthquake, a town that looks after itself, an inn reviewed honestly, an essay on making time to read — 480 to 560 characters.
How to use them
Read once for the gist without stopping — that is the skill the N3 exam actually tests, and stopping at every unknown word trains the opposite of it. Then read again slowly, using the furigana and the word box. Only then answer. Question 4 has no options: the model answer on page 2 is one right answer, not the only one.
The unspaced text is deliberate. If it feels harder than the N4 passages even where the words are easier, that is the missing spaces, not you — and reading a page of it a day is the fastest way for that difficulty to disappear.