Kenneth

I'm Kenneth, a software engineer in Brisbane, Australia. I've been hooked on Japan since I was a kid watching anime, and that grew into a love of the food and the history too. I've travelled through Japan many times, but I've never managed to speak fluently or get a proper qualification.

So I'm working towards the JLPT N5, and I built Nihongomachi to study for it around a busy schedule. I'm a learner, not a Japanese teacher, and I write the guides as one: what the exam asks, what I found hard, and what helped.

Because I'm not a native speaker, I don't rely on memory for the content. Vocabulary and kanji follow the Tanos JLPT lists, kanji readings are checked against KANJIDIC (EDRDG), the grammar scope follows JLPT Sensei's N5 list, and facts about the exam (format, pass marks, dates) are checked against jlpt.jp. Practice questions get an independent review before they go live.

If you spot a mistake, every page has a link to report it, and I fix reports as they come in.

More of my projects: kennethau.com.

Guides by Kenneth

• JLPT N5 Exam Guide: Format, Scoring, Dates and How to Pass
• JLPT N5 Listening: The Four Question Types and How to Answer Each One
• Japanese Noun Sentences for JLPT N5: は, です, の and More
• JLPT N5 Grammar: All 89 Points by Group, and the 20 to Learn First
• JLPT N5 Kanji: All 103 Kanji by Theme, with Readings and the Words That Use Them
• Japanese Particles for JLPT N5: は, が, を, に, で and the Rest, with the Pairs That Trip You Up
• JLPT N5 Study Plan: How Long It Takes and a Week-by-Week Schedule
• JLPT N5 Reading: How to Answer Short Passages, Longer Texts and Information Search
• JLPT N5 Vocabulary List: All 814 Words by Topic, and the 77 to Learn First