JLPT N5 essential words: the 224 words to start with

JLPT N5 is the entry-level Japanese proficiency exam. You don't need thousands of words to pass — but you do need the right ones. Below is a curated starter list of 100 essential JLPT N5 vocabulary words grouped by topic, followed by reference tables that carry the same topics further — 224 distinct words in all — plus tips on how to study them efficiently with Mirai Voca.

1. Greetings & basics (10 words)

こんにちは (hello), おはよう (good morning), こんばんは (good evening), さようなら (goodbye), ありがとう (thank you), すみません (excuse me), はい (yes), いいえ (no), おねがいします (please), ごめんなさい (sorry)

2. People & family (10 words)

わたし (I), あなた (you), ともだち (friend), せんせい (teacher), がくせい (student), おとうさん (father), おかあさん (mother), あに (older brother), あね (older sister), かぞく (family)

3. Numbers & time (15 words)

いち (1), に (2), さん (3), よん (4), ご (5), ろく (6), なな (7), はち (8), きゅう (9), じゅう (10), きょう (today), あした (tomorrow), きのう (yesterday), じかん (time), ふん (minute)

4. Daily verbs (15 words)

いく (to go), くる (to come), たべる (to eat), のむ (to drink), みる (to see / watch), きく (to listen), はなす (to speak), よむ (to read), かく (to write), する (to do), ある (to exist [things]), いる (to exist [people]), かう (to buy), わかる (to understand), おぼえる (to remember)

5. Common adjectives (10 words)

おおきい (big), ちいさい (small), あたらしい (new), ふるい (old), たかい (high / expensive), やすい (cheap), おいしい (delicious), おもしろい (interesting), いい (good), わるい (bad)

6. Places & directions (10 words)

がっこう (school), いえ (home), えき (station), みせ (shop), びょういん (hospital), みち (road), ひだり (left), みぎ (right), まえ (front), うしろ (behind)

7. Food & objects (15 words)

みず (water), おちゃ (tea), ごはん (rice / meal), パン (bread), にく (meat), さかな (fish), やさい (vegetable), くだもの (fruit), ほん (book), えんぴつ (pencil), かばん (bag), でんわ (phone), くるま (car), でんしゃ (train), とけい (clock / watch)

8. Question & connector words (15 words)

なに (what), だれ (who), どこ (where), いつ (when), なぜ / どうして (why), いくら (how much), いくつ (how many), どう (how), これ (this), それ (that), あれ (that over there), ここ (here), そこ (there), あそこ (over there), そして (and then)

9. The reference tables: 124 more words, by topic

The eight lists above are the starter set — the words you cannot build a sentence without. The tables that follow take the same topics considerably further, adding 124 words the starter lists do not cover, and add the two columns that the kana-only lists leave out: the Kanji you will actually see on the exam, and the reading. N5 does not demand that you write Kanji, but the vocabulary and reading sections print words in Kanji, so recognizing 電車 as でんしゃ is a genuine test skill rather than an optional extra.

A dash in the Kanji column means the word is normally written in kana even by native writers — かばん, いす, and ある all have Kanji forms that are rarely used in ordinary text, and learning the rare form is wasted effort at this level. Two practical notes before you start: read each table aloud rather than scanning it, and do not try to absorb a whole table in one sitting. Section 22 sets out a pace that works.

10. People and family

Japanese uses two different sets of family words: a plain set for your own family when speaking to outsiders, and a polite set for other people's families (and for addressing your own relatives directly). Both appear at N5, and confusing them is the most common family-vocabulary error.

11. Time, days, and dates

This is the densest scoring area at N5, because time expressions appear in the listening section constantly — appointments, train times, opening hours.

The days of the week are built from a single pattern — an element plus 曜日 (ようび) — so they are seven words for the price of one rule: 月曜日 (げつようび) Monday, 火曜日 (かようび) Tuesday, 水曜日 (すいようび) Wednesday, 木曜日 (もくようび) Thursday, 金曜日 (きんようび) Friday, 土曜日 (どようび) Saturday, 日曜日 (にちようび) Sunday. Days of the month are a different matter: the first ten are a completely irregular native series — 一日 (ついたち), 二日 (ふつか), 三日 (みっか), 四日 (よっか), 五日 (いつか), 六日 (むいか), 七日 (なのか), 八日 (ようか), 九日 (ここのか), 十日 (とおか) — and 二十日 (はつか) breaks the pattern again at the twentieth. Everything else follows the ordinary number plus にち. These fifteen or so readings are worth memorizing outright, because they are guaranteed to appear.

12. Places and buildings

Notice how many of these are transparent compounds once you know a few Kanji: 病 (illness) + 院 (institution) gives 病院, and 図書 (books) + 館 (hall) gives 図書館. You are not required to decompose Kanji at N5, but starting the habit here makes N4 dramatically cheaper — the same components recombine endlessly.

13. Food and drink

Two productive patterns hide in this table. The three meal names are just 朝 / 昼 / 晩 attached to ご飯, so learning ご飯 buys you four words. And 食べ物 / 飲み物 show the noun-forming pattern "verb stem + 物 (もの)" — the stem of 食べる plus "thing" gives "food". You will meet the same construction in 買い物 (かいもの, shopping) and 読み物 (よみもの, reading matter).

14. Everyday objects

15. Common verbs

Verbs are listed here in the dictionary form, which is how a dictionary and this site will show them. The exam mostly uses the polite ます-form, so learn both shapes together from the start rather than converting on the fly.

Japanese has only two genuinely irregular verbs — する (to do) and 来る (to come) — and both are in this table. 来る is the harder of the two because its stem vowel changes: きます, こない, きて, all written with the same Kanji 来. Every other verb here belongs to one of two regular groups, and once you can tell them apart the conjugations are mechanical; the verb conjugation guide walks through how to sort them.

16. Common adjectives

Japanese has two adjective classes that behave differently in a sentence, so learn every adjective together with its class label. Getting this wrong produces sentences that are wrong in a way native speakers notice immediately.

The trap is in the second table. 好き, 嫌い, and きれい all end in an い sound, and all three are な-adjectives — you say 好きな音楽 (favourite music) and きれいな部屋 (a clean room), never ×好い音楽. The rule that actually works is not "does it end in い" but "does it end in the kana い attached to the Kanji stem", and since that rule is fiddly, the reliable approach is simply to tag the class when you first learn the word.

17. Question words and the こそあど set

The demonstratives are worth learning as a grid rather than as twenty separate words, because they are built from four prefixes — こ (near the speaker), そ (near the listener), あ (away from both), ど (the question form) — attached to five endings.

Two things this grid makes obvious that a word list hides. First, これ and この are not interchangeable: これ stands alone ("this one"), この must be followed by a noun (この本, "this book"). Beginners routinely say ×これ本. Second, the あ series is not "that over there" in the English sense of pointing across the room only — it also covers things distant from both speakers in shared memory, which is why あの人 can mean "that person we both know". The polite こちら row does double duty as a courteous way to say "here" or "this way", which is why shop staff say こちらへどうぞ.

18. Directions and position

These are nouns, not prepositions, and they slot into a fixed frame: 机の上に本があります (つくえの うえに ほんが あります) — "There is a book on the desk", literally "at the desk's top, a book exists". Get that frame — X の POSITION に Y があります — and the whole group becomes usable at once. It is also the single most reliable question type in the N5 listening section, where you hear a description and choose the matching picture. The particles guide covers の and に, the two pieces holding that frame together.

19. Numbers and counters

The numbers themselves are easy: 一 (いち), 二 (に), 三 (さん), 四 (よん / し), 五 (ご), 六 (ろく), 七 (なな / しち), 八 (はち), 九 (きゅう / く), 十 (じゅう), then 百 (ひゃく) for a hundred, 千 (せん) for a thousand, and 万 (まん) for ten thousand. Note that Japanese groups large numbers in units of ten thousand rather than a thousand, so 50,000 is 五万 (ごまん), not "fifty thousand".

Counters are the hard part. Japanese cannot say "three books" — it says "books, three flat-bound-volumes' worth", and the counter word changes with the shape or nature of the thing. Worse, some numbers fuse with some counters and change sound.

Do not try to learn every sound change as an abstract rule. Learn the counters as fixed phrases in the ranges you will actually use — 一人で (alone), コーヒーを二つ (two coffees), 三時半 (half past three) — and the alternations arrive attached to something useful. If you are stuck for a counter in real conversation, 〜つ works for most concrete objects up to ten and native speakers will understand you perfectly. The counters guide goes through the full set with more examples.

20. N5 words that are irregular or easy to confuse

A short list of the specific items that cost marks. None of these are obscure; they are all high-frequency words with a wrinkle.

• 日 has a different reading in almost every word. 今日 (きょう), 明日 (あした), 昨日 (きのう), 毎日 (まいにち), 日曜日 (にちようび), 一日 — which is ついたち as a date but いちにち as a duration. Treat each as its own vocabulary item rather than trying to derive it.
• 人 likewise: ひと on its own, 一人 (ひとり) and 二人 (ふたり) irregularly, さんにん regularly from three up, and 日本人 (にほんじん) in nationalities.
• いい is irregular and borrows from 良い (よい). Its negative is よくない and its past is よかった — never ×いくない or ×いかった. This catches almost everyone once.
• Same reading, different word: 早い and 速い are both はやい — early in time versus fast in speed. 暑い and 熱い are both あつい — hot weather versus hot to the touch. Their opposites split the same way: 寒い is cold weather, 冷たい (つめたい) is cold to the touch.
• 高い does two jobs: tall and expensive. Which opposite you need depends on the sense — 低い (ひくい) for height, 安い for price.
• ある and いる both mean "to exist" but split by animacy: いる for people and animals, ある for everything else. 猫がいます, but 本があります.
• Verbs that take an unexpected particle. 分かる and 好き take が, not を: 日本語が分かります, 寿司が好きです. 会う and 乗る take に: 友達に会います, バスに乗ります. These pairings are tested directly at N5, so learn the particle with the word.
• 行く has an irregular te-form: 行って, not the ×行いて its group would predict. It is the one exception in an otherwise tidy set.
• Family words come in pairs. Use 父 and 母 for your own parents when speaking to someone outside the family, and お父さん / お母さん for other people's parents — and when addressing your own. The same split runs through 兄 / お兄さん and 姉 / お姉さん.

Keep a personal version of this list as you study. The items above are the common traps, but your own errors will cluster somewhere specific, and a list of twelve things you personally keep getting wrong is worth more revision time than another hundred new words. The review screen is built for exactly that pile.

21. How to study these efficiently

• Don't try to memorize all 100 in one sitting. Take 10 a day across 10 days, then review the full list at the end.
• Use Mirai Voca's flashcards on shuffle mode. Memorizing order gives a false sense of mastery.
• After 10 days, take the JLPT N5 quiz on Mirai Voca to see which words you actually retained.
• Make tiny example sentences. "わたしは みずを のみます" (I drink water) is more memorable than the bare word.
• Re-review missed words the next day, not later in the week. Same-day review is by far the most effective.

22. A study sequence and how to pace it

Order matters more than most vocabulary advice admits, because some groups unlock sentences and others only sit there. This sequence puts the unlocking groups first:

1. Numbers, time, and days (section 11). Almost every early sentence needs a "when", and this group also feeds the listening section immediately.
2. Question words and the こそあど grid (section 17). The moment you have these, you can ask for anything you do not know, which turns every conversation into a study session.
3. People and places (sections 10 and 12). Nouns to drop into the frames you can now build.
4. Verbs (section 15), learned in both dictionary and ます forms. This is where the vocabulary starts producing real sentences rather than labels.
5. Adjectives (section 16), each tagged い or な on the card itself.
6. Objects, food, and position words (sections 13, 14, and 18). Concrete, easy, and best used as review filler on heavy days.
7. Counters last (section 19), once you have nouns worth counting.

On volume: the N5 vocabulary requirement is commonly cited at roughly 700 to 800 words, and the tables in this guide cover a substantial core of that. Pacing depends on more than willpower. At 10 new words a day plus review, expect somewhere around ten to twelve weeks — but that assumes you can already read kana fluently, which is the real prerequisite. At 20 a day the calendar halves to five or six weeks while the daily review queue roughly doubles, so it only works if you can commit 30 to 40 minutes rather than 15. Learners who already read Chinese characters move faster through the Kanji column and no faster through the readings, which are the actual work.

If you are working toward a specific sitting, plan backwards. The JLPT is held twice a year, in July and December, with some overseas locations offering the December date only. Aim to have vocabulary essentially complete about eight weeks before the exam, then spend those last two months on grammar, reading speed, and listening, where the marks are actually decided — passing requires both a total score and a minimum in each section, so a strong vocabulary score cannot rescue a weak listening one. Mirai Voca's JLPT module holds 2,904 words across all five levels and is split into Day-sized decks; you can run them from the study screen, keep anything unfamiliar cycling in your review deck, and work through the full N5 word list when you want the complete set rather than the curated one. When N5 stops feeling like work, the N4 vocabulary guide is the natural next step.

23. What's next

Once these 100 starter words feel natural, work through the reference tables above for the remaining 124, then move to N5 grammar drills. Mirai Voca's JLPT module is organized into Days specifically for this kind of incremental study.