JLPT N5 vocabulary comes to around 800 words, the basic lexicon of daily life. From the bottom of the hill that sounds like a lot, but these words form a very coherent set: common verbs, a couple of families of adjectives, everyday nouns, and the small grammar words that hold a sentence together. Once you see how they organize themselves, learning the N5 vocabulary list becomes far less intimidating.
A useful reminder first: there has been no official word list published by the JLPT organizers since 2010. The figure of 800 words is a solid consensus, repeated across the main preparation resources. What matters is not the exact count but the nature of these words: they describe your day, your home, how you get around, what the weather is doing.
種How the N5 vocabulary breaks down
Before diving into lists, it helps to see the big categories. N5 vocabulary sorts into four broad types.
- Verbs · around a hundred very frequent verbs: to go, to eat, to see, to do, to buy, to understand.
- Adjectives · two families, the い adjectives and the な adjectives, used to describe size, quality and feeling.
- Everyday nouns · the largest share: home, school, food, time, places, people.
- Grammar words · the demonstratives, the question words, the adverbs, the conjunctions and the particles that structure everything.
This breakdown explains why vocabulary and grammar are learned together: a verb is useless without the particle that goes with it, and an adjective needs its sentence to come alive.
家Home and daily life
This is the heart of N5: the objects and places around you every day.
- 水 · mizu · water
- 家 · ie · house, home
- 本 · hon · book
- 犬 · inu · dog
- 猫 · neko · cat
- 父 · chichi · father
- 母 · haha · mother
- 友達 · tomodachi · friend
- 食べ物 · tabemono · food
- 飲み物 · nomimono · drink
母は本を買いました。
haha wa hon o kaimashita.
My mother bought a book.
校School and work
Many N5 candidates study in a school setting, or with a study trip in mind, which is why this family carries so much weight.
- 学校 · gakkō · school
- 学生 · gakusei · student
- 先生 · sensei · teacher
- 会社 · kaisha · company
- 仕事 · shigoto · work, job
- 名前 · namae · name
- 言葉 · kotoba · word, language
- 勉強 · benkyō · study
先生は学校にいます。
sensei wa gakkō ni imasu.
The teacher is at school.
時Time and the calendar
The days, the parts of the day and the markers of duration show up in almost every section of the exam.
- 今日 · kyō · today
- 明日 · ashita · tomorrow
- 昨日 · kinō · yesterday
- 朝 · asa · morning
- 夜 · yoru · night
- 時間 · jikan · time, hour
- 週 · shū · week
- 月 · tsuki · moon, month
- 年 · toshi · year
- 毎日 · mainichi · every day
明日学校へ行きます。
ashita gakkō e ikimasu.
Tomorrow I am going to school.
道Getting around and places
Finding your way, moving, asking for directions: N5 gives you enough to survive in a Japanese town.
- 駅 · eki · station
- 電車 · densha · train
- 車 · kuruma · car
- 道 · michi · road, path
- 店 · mise · shop, store
- 町 · machi · town, neighborhood
- 右 · migi · right
- 左 · hidari · left
- 前 · mae · front, before
- 後ろ · ushiro · behind
駅は店の前にあります。
eki wa mise no mae ni arimasu.
The station is in front of the shop.
動The verbs you will use all the time
At N5 you learn verbs in their polite ます form, which is also the most useful one for polite speech.
- 行く · iku · to go
- 来る · kuru · to come
- 食べる · taberu · to eat
- 飲む · nomu · to drink
- 見る · miru · to see, to watch
- 聞く · kiku · to listen, to ask
- 話す · hanasu · to speak
- 買う · kau · to buy
- 読む · yomu · to read
- 分かる · wakaru · to understand
友達とお茶を飲みます。
tomodachi to ocha o nomimasu.
I drink tea with a friend.
順Why the order matters more than the list
You might think it is enough to print out the 800 words and swallow them in alphabetical order. That is the worst possible idea. The brain holds on to what makes sense and what it can connect to something it already knows.
A good learning order starts with the most frequent words, the ones that turn up in almost every sentence, then introduces the rest by leaning on them. Learning 飲む (to drink) just before 飲み物 (drink) is almost free: the second one practically guesses itself. Learning ten animal names in a row, on the other hand, is a recipe for confusing them. Order turns a list into a network, and a network is far easier to remember than a pile.
Learn each word inside a sentence, never on its own. An isolated word is a dead flashcard; the same word in a sentence carries its grammar, its pronunciation and its use all at once.
憶Remembering for good: context and spaced repetition
Knowing 800 words on one day is worth nothing if you forget half of them the following week. Two principles make all the difference over time.
First, context: a word met in several different sentences sticks far deeper than a word seen on a two-sided card. Second, spaced repetition: you review each word just before you would forget it, at growing intervals. Fragile words come back often, solid ones space out. It is the same engine that underpins our advice on learning Japanese on your own, and it is the single biggest reason vocabulary either lasts or evaporates.
続N5 vocabulary, without the grind
Eight hundred words digests quietly over a few months if you see a handful a day, in context, and let spaced repetition handle the reminders. Intensity is useless here; it is steadiness that pays. To place this vocabulary inside the wider program, read the complete N5 guide and the companion piece on the N5 kanji.
That is exactly what Hibi does: everyday vocabulary shown in real sentences, in an order designed so each word leans on the one before, with spaced review deciding what to show you again and when. Hibi is launching soon on the App Store, and you can read more about the approach on the Hibi page.