Voylin's Life

Nihongo Sou Matome – Review

Books used in this video:
Grammar book: https://amzn.to/3jLY2Go
Reading book: https://amzn.to/3Xopo3l
Listening book: https://amzn.to/3Yzu5s8
Kanji book: https://amzn.to/3Ym8Gmn
Vocab book: https://amzn.to/3lt2dYj
Question practice book: https://amzn.to/3ROGw0I

What is Nihongo Sou Matome

The Nihongo Sou Matome series is a set of books designed specifically for people preparing for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). As a fan of these books since I began studying Japanese, I can confidently say that they are an efficient way to study and review for the JLPT.

Books per level

  • N5 level: 1 book
  • N4 level: 2 books
  • N3 level: 5 books
  • N2 level: 5 books
  • N1 level: 5 books

There are also smaller test books available for each level, which are mainly practice tests. If you don’t want to buy all the lesson books, these test books are probably still recommended as it really is able to show you on which parts of the test you should practice more.

Starting from the N3 books, each book covers a specific topic and includes a list of things to study. The N5 book has all topics in one book and the N4 has spread it over 2 different ones.

Book structure

The books are divided into weeks and days. Every day you get some stuff to learn, and some questions to see if you understand what you have learned. At the end of the week you get a test to test yourself on everything you have learned the past few days.

Because of this division in days, it makes planning on how to use these books more simple as the book basically tells you what to study when. Following this daily pattern is really beneficial in my opinion as it makes certain that you don’t go too fast over everything.

Why do I like these books?

It’s no secret that I’ve been a fan of these books ever since I started studying japanese as I always recommend them to everybody and always speak highly of them. But every book has some negative and positive points. Let’s talk about these points as they may be your deciding factor wether you want them or not.

For who are these books

First let’s talk about who these books are for. Their main target audience is people going for the JLPT test. They are designed and layed out for that purpose, but that doesn’t mean that they can only be used for that purpose.

For people studying Japanese in general, these books will be very helpful as well. You could try to find out what parts of Japanese you struggle with and buy those specific books.

Positives:

  • Very easy to use, well structured;
  • The dividing into weeks if helpful to not over-study yourself; (Generally the books are divided into 6 weeks)
  • Good for making study lists for the JLPT; (You can easily form together your own list as everything is nicely put together in the learning sections of the book)
  • They’re priced reasonably;
  • Great way to check which level you are at. (Especially the small books)

Negatives:

  • More questions per day would be helpful;
  • Book of N3 listening is only 4 weeks long; (For someone who struggles with listening, would have liked to at least get 6 weeks like the other books)
  • Getting all topic books becomes expensive; (Only go for the topics you really need if you don’t want to spend too much money)
  • These are all test books.

The fact that these are all test books isn’t that bad, but sometimes the explanations are a bit lacking. These books are kind of made to review from and not learn from. Especially the grammar explanations are somewhat lacking. It’s still useable, but you will have to look up certain rules to have a better understanding of them.

Do I recommend these books?

If you want decent books to prepare for the JLPT, then these are going to be perfect for you. There aren’t many other books I could recommend for the purpose of passing the JLPT, maybe the Shin Kanzen Master series, but those are more complicated in my opinion. (I haven’t given them a decent try yet, this is just my initial impression)

Like I said before, I really love these books as they are a great fit for me and the yare really worth their money as they are not that expensive as well. I don’t own all of them because I can easily rent the ones I don’t have from the library in my town.

Word of advice for people following these books

Something I would recommend is to look at next days page to study those parts in advance, if you use these books to learn from then this is probably the best tactic to tackle them.

Also, don’t do multiple books at once or at least not more than 2. The amount of reviewing gets very high, very quickly. So if you can’t keep up with reviewing then your studying becomes less efficient, and you might give up on using the books all together, which would be a shame.

And for the small books, you really need some kind of dark paper to put behind the page you are working on, because else you can see the answers through the question page … which kind of ruins your studying as the moment you know you can see them through the page, you can’t un-see it and see the answers on every page. ^^”