JLPT N4 vocabulary preview — what's new beyond N5

JLPT N4 is the second-easiest level of the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, and the natural next step after N5. The vocabulary roughly doubles (from ~800 to ~1,500 words), and you start seeing words for emotions, opinions, time expressions, and slightly more abstract ideas. This guide previews exactly what changes.

1. What "N4" actually means

N4 sits between absolute beginner (N5) and lower-intermediate (N3). At N4 you should be able to understand basic Japanese spoken at a slow pace, read short passages on familiar topics, and write simple sentences with hiragana, katakana, and around 300 Kanji. The exam lasts about 2 hours and tests vocabulary, grammar, reading, and listening.

2. The new vocabulary categories

If N5 was "survival Japanese," N4 is "describing your day in detail." The new vocabulary clusters around these topics:

• Emotions and opinions — words like 好き (suki, "to like"), 嫌い (kirai, "to dislike"), 楽しい (tanoshii, "fun"), 心配 (shinpai, "worry"), 大事 (daiji, "important").
• Time and frequency — 時々 (tokidoki, "sometimes"), たいてい (taitei, "usually"), すぐ (sugu, "immediately"), 最近 (saikin, "recently"), まだ (mada, "still / not yet").
• Travel and transportation — 旅行 (ryokō, "trip"), 乗る (noru, "to ride"), 降りる (oriru, "to get off"), 切符 (kippu, "ticket"), 駅 (eki, "station").
• School and work — 試験 (shiken, "exam"), 宿題 (shukudai, "homework"), 仕事 (shigoto, "work"), 会社 (kaisha, "company"), 会議 (kaigi, "meeting").
• Compound verbs — verbs combining two ideas, e.g. 見つける (mitsukeru, "to find"), 持っていく (motte iku, "to take with you"), 書き直す (kakinaosu, "to rewrite").

3. 60 example N4 words

Here are 60 high-frequency JLPT N4 words you'll see on almost every practice exam. Read them aloud and notice which categories feel familiar already — those are the easy wins.

4. How to study from N5 to N4

The most effective approach is to overlap the two levels:

• Spend the first 4 weeks reviewing N5 — make sure you can recall ~90% on shuffled flashcards.
• From week 5, start adding N4 vocabulary at 15–20 new words a day. Don't drop N5 review yet.
• By week 12, you can drop N5 review and focus 100% on N4 plus simple grammar drills.
• Take a full N4 mock vocab test every 2 weeks to track progress.

5. Common N4 traps

• Confusing similar verbs. 受ける (to receive) vs 受け取る (to take delivery), 始める (to start something) vs 始まる (something starts).
• On'yomi vs kun'yomi. N4 introduces more compound Kanji words where the reading is on'yomi (Chinese-derived). Drill the pair shape + reading together.
• Look-alike Kanji. 木 (tree) vs 本 (book) vs 体 (body), or 入 (enter) vs 人 (person). Use mnemonic stories.

6. The qualitative shift: N5 names things, N4 describes what happens to them

Counting words makes N4 look like "N5 with a bigger list." In practice four things change at once, and together they change the kind of study that works. Learners who keep using their N5 method — one card, one English gloss, recognition only — are the ones who stall.

• Kanji compounds become the default unit. A large share of N5 vocabulary is kana-only or single-kanji: たべる, みず, 人, 山. N4 fills up with two-kanji Sino-Japanese compounds read with on'yomi — 説明 (せつめい, explanation), 経験 (けいけん, experience), 準備 (じゅんび, preparation), 都合 (つごう, circumstances). The good news is that these are compositional: once 準 and 備 are familiar, 準備 costs almost nothing, and the same components resurface for years. This is the level where learning kanji by components rather than whole shapes starts paying compound interest.
• Vocabulary stops being pointable. You can teach 犬 (いぬ, dog) by pointing at a dog. You cannot point at 都合, 気持ち (きもち, feeling), 場合 (ばあい, case/situation), or 遠慮 (えんりょ, holding back out of consideration). Abstract words need a situation, not a translation: 今日は都合が悪いです。(きょうは つごうが わるいです) — "Today doesn't work for me." One good sentence beats three synonyms in your notes.
• Plain form arrives, and words change shape. N5 lives almost entirely in です／ます. N4 puts dictionary form, ない form, た form, and て form inside sentences, so the 行きます you memorized shows up as 行く, 行かない, 行った, 行って, 行ける, 行こう. If your deck only stores the ます shape, half of N4 reading looks like unfamiliar vocabulary when it is actually familiar vocabulary wearing a different ending. Fix the conjugation side early with the verb conjugation guide.
• Transitive and intransitive pairs start to cost you points. At N5 you can survive without noticing that 開ける and 開く are two different words. At N4 they appear as each other's distractors, and choosing the wrong one also forces the wrong particle. Section 8 below treats these as a single block, because that is the only way they stick.

7. Core N4 verbs

Verbs carry most of the meaning in Japanese sentences, and N4 is where the verb inventory roughly doubles. These 28 appear constantly in textbooks, practice papers, and everyday speech. Learn each one in the dictionary form shown here, then immediately say its て form and た form out loud — that habit alone removes most N4 reading friction.

8. Transitive and intransitive pairs — the N4 signature topic

Japanese frequently supplies two related verbs for the same event: one for "somebody does it" (transitive, 他動詞 / たどうし) and one for "it happens" (intransitive, 自動詞 / じどうし). English uses one word for both — "the door opened" and "I opened the door" — so this distinction has no hook in your first language and has to be learned deliberately.

Two rules make the whole table usable. First, particles follow the verb type: the intransitive verb marks its subject with が, the transitive verb marks its object with を. ドアが開きました。(ドアが あきました) — "The door opened." 田中さんがドアを開けました。(たなかさんが ドアを あけました) — "Tanaka opened the door." Getting the particle right is often what the exam question is really checking, so drill the pair and its particle together rather than as isolated vocabulary.

Second, the て-いる form means different things depending on the verb type. With an intransitive verb it describes a resulting state: 窓が開いています。(まどが あいています) — "The window is open." With a transitive verb it describes an action in progress: 窓を開けています。(まどを あけています) — "He is opening the window." And 〜てある marks a state someone created on purpose: 窓が開けてあります。(まどが あけてあります) — "The window has been left open (deliberately)." Learners who never separate these three read every 〜ている as "-ing" and quietly misunderstand a lot of sentences.

9. Adjectives and adverbs at N4

N5 adjectives describe physical properties — big, hot, cheap. N4 adjectives describe judgements and impressions, which is what lets you finally express an opinion. Keep the い／な label attached to every card you make: it decides the negative (危なくない vs 安全じゃない), the past (汚かった vs 複雑だった), and the noun-modifying form (正しい答え vs 丁寧な説明).

Adverbs and connectors are the most under-studied part of N4 and the easiest points to pick up, because they are almost all kana and there are only a few dozen of them. Several are polarity items — they demand a negative later in the sentence — and the exam loves testing exactly that. ほとんど食べませんでした。(ほとんど たべませんでした) — "I hardly ate anything." なかなか来ません。(なかなか きません) — "He just won't come."

10. Abstract nouns and する-verbs

This group is where the compound-kanji shift is most visible, and it is also the best value per card, because many of these nouns become verbs simply by adding する: 相談する (to consult), 連絡する (to get in touch), 予約する (to book), 招待する (to invite), 出席する (to attend). Learn the noun and you get the verb free. Note that published level assignments differ slightly between vocabulary lists — the JLPT has not released an official word list since the 2010 format revision — so treat this as "the words you meet around N4" rather than a certified boundary.

Watch the near-synonyms inside this group, because that is where exam questions live. 予定 is a schedule that already exists ("I have plans on Saturday"); 計画 (けいかく) is a plan you designed ("the company's five-year plan"); 都合 is whether a time suits you personally. Likewise 用意 and 準備 both translate as "preparation", but 用意 leans toward laying things out and 準備 toward getting ready overall — in most everyday sentences either is acceptable, which is exactly why the exam tests them in contexts where only one fits.

11. The grammar your N4 vocabulary lives inside

Vocabulary and grammar are scored separately but learned together. These are the N4 patterns that reshape the words you just learned; study a new verb by immediately pushing it through two or three of them.

• Potential form ("can do"). 読む → 読める, 食べる → 食べられる, する → できる. 漢字が少し読めるようになりました。(かんじが すこし よめるように なりました) — "I've become able to read a little kanji." Note the particle shift: the thing you can do is usually marked with が, not を.
• Volitional ("let's / I think I'll"). 行く → 行こう, 見る → 見よう. 週末は映画を見ようと思っています。(しゅうまつは えいがを みようと おもっています) — "I'm thinking of watching a film this weekend."
• Conditionals たら and ば. 駅に着いたら電話します。(えきに ついたら でんわします) — "I'll call when I get to the station." 説明を読めば分かります。(せつめいを よめば わかります) — "If you read the explanation, you'll understand." たら is the flexible everyday one; ば leans toward general conditions.
• Passive, introduced here for the first time. 会議で意見を聞かれました。(かいぎで いけんを きかれました) — "I was asked for my opinion in the meeting." The same form doubles as a light honorific later on, so time spent here is repaid at N3 and beyond.
• Causative ("make / let someone do"). 先生は学生に本を読ませました。(せんせいは がくせいに ほんを よませました) — "The teacher had the students read the book."
• Plain-form clauses inside sentences. This is the structural key to N4 reading. 明日は雨が降ると思います。(あしたは あめが ふると おもいます) — "I think it'll rain tomorrow." 日本語を勉強するのは楽しいです。(にほんごを べんきょうするのは たのしいです) — "Studying Japanese is fun." 富士山に登ったことがありますか。(ふじさんに のぼったことが ありますか) — "Have you ever climbed Mt. Fuji?"
• Obligation and permission. 明日までに宿題を出さなければなりません。(あしたまでに しゅくだいを ださなければ なりません) — "I have to hand in the homework by tomorrow." ここで写真を撮ってもいいですか。(ここで しゃしんを とっても いいですか) — "May I take photos here?"

12. How much kanji does N4 actually expect?

The commonly quoted figure is around 300 kanji cumulative, and that is the number most textbooks and prep publishers build toward. It is worth knowing where it comes from: the organizers stopped publishing official kanji and vocabulary lists when the test was revised in 2010, so every "N4 kanji list" you find is a reconstruction from past papers and teaching experience. Different publishers disagree at the margins by a few dozen characters. Treat 300 as a target, not a syllabus, and expect a handful of unfamiliar characters on exam day regardless.

What matters more than the count is what you are asked to do with them. The 文字・語彙 (もじ・ごい, script and vocabulary) section asks you to read a kanji word in kana, and to pick which kanji spells a word given in kana. You are never asked to hand-write kanji, which means stroke-order practice is optional for exam purposes even though it helps memory. The N4 set overlaps almost entirely with the characters Japanese children learn in elementary grades one to three, so any children's-textbook ordering is a reasonable study sequence.

Plan for multiple readings per character rather than one. 上 is うえ in 上 ("above"), あ in 上がる (あがる, "to go up"), and じょう in 上手 (じょうず, "skilful"). 生 is せい in 学生 (がくせい, "student"), い in 生きる (いきる, "to live"), and なま in 生ビール (なまビール, "draft beer"). The practical rule at N4: learn the reading that appears in the compound in front of you, and let the second and third readings arrive through the N4 word list instead of memorizing reading tables in the abstract.

13. A 16-week plan with weekly targets

Section 4 gives the overlap principle; here is what it looks like on a calendar. The plan assumes roughly 6–8 hours a week and a solid N5 base, and it front-loads new words so the last month is pure consolidation. Adjust the pace down, not the review — a smaller daily intake with complete review always beats a large intake with a growing backlog.

The arithmetic: 80 × 8 weeks + 40 × 3 weeks ≈ 760 new words, which comfortably covers the roughly 700 words N4 adds on top of N5, with slack for the ones that refuse to stick. If you can only manage half that intake, extend to 24–28 weeks rather than cutting the review weeks — weeks 14 to 16 are where the score actually forms. A spaced repetition schedule makes the backlog visible, which is the point.

14. Word lists are half the job — pair them with reading

A list teaches you that 届ける means "to deliver". Reading teaches you that 荷物を届けてもらいました is how someone says a parcel arrived, and that is the version the exam and real life use. The practical loop is short: study a Day set in the study screen, then within 24 hours go find two or three of those words in text you did not choose yourself. Graded news written for learners, the furigana editions of manga, and product packaging all work; the criterion is only that you did not pick the sentence.

A useful standard is the three-exposure rule: a word is genuinely yours when you have met it in a list, encountered it in the wild, and produced it yourself in a sentence. Most learners do the first, skip the second, and never attempt the third — which is why recall collapses two weeks after a level is "finished". When a word fails the second exposure, do not just look at the answer: put the sentence you found into your review deck so the context comes back with the word, rather than guessing the reading from the kanji shape and moving on.

Keep the N5 layer alive while you do this. The exam samples across everything below your level, and N5 words appear in N4 questions as the surrounding scaffolding. One short weekly pass through the N5 list is enough; skipping it entirely is the most common cause of a mysteriously low reading score at N4.

15. Why people stall between N5 and N4

The gap between N5 and N4 produces more quiet quitting than any other step except the jump to N3. Almost always it is one of these six causes rather than a lack of ability or time.

1. Recognition-only review. Drilling Japanese → English feels productive and tests the easy direction. The orthography questions run the other way — you are given a word in kana and must pick the kanji. Flip at least a third of your reviews to English or kana → Japanese and your score moves before your vocabulary does.
2. Never converting ます to plain form. Cards stored as 行きます leave you re-deriving 行った in the middle of a reading passage. Store the dictionary form; produce the polite form on demand, not the other way round.
3. Treating kanji as pictures. Whole-shape memorization works for the first 100 characters and then collapses under look-alikes. Components scale; shapes do not.
4. Zero listening until the month before the exam. Listening is roughly a third of the N4 score and it is the one section that cannot be crammed, because it depends on processing speed rather than knowledge. Ten minutes daily from week one beats two hours the weekend before.
5. Skipping the transitive/intransitive pairs because they feel like a grammar problem rather than vocabulary. They are both, they are heavily tested, and they only take a week if you learn them as pairs.
6. Adding new words while the review queue grows. The queue, not the new-card count, is the honest measure of progress. If it has been climbing for two weeks, stop adding for a few days and clear it — you will finish the level sooner. When N4 is genuinely stable, the N3 list and the N3 timeline guide are the next step, and they assume everything above is already automatic.