How (and whether) to pass the Kanji Kentei 2-kyuu in 3 years: A short meditation

Hey folks,
today I got my [results](https://fi-le.net/images/kanken.png) of this summer’s round of the Kanji Kentei 2-kyuu. Surprisingly, it turned out to be [177/200](https://fi-le.net/images/kanken.jpg) and 155 was the cutoff for passing. Cool!

**What are you even talking about?**

The Kanji Kentei, or Kanken, in English Japan Kanji Aptitude Test, is an exam by the 日本漢字能力検定協会 that’s supposed to test how well you can read and especially write isolated kanji from memory. 2-kyuu is designed for Japanese high school students and graduates and is frequently taken for getting into universities or a job, the good old 就職活動. This level supposedly tests all the 2136 常用漢字, details [here](https://www.kanken.or.jp/kanken/outline/degree.html).

**How to pass**

I’ve been learning Japanese for 3 years now. For the first two years, you can see my [post](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/p9xjn5/how_to_pass_n1_in_two_years_apparently/) about about taking the JLPT. In the third, well, I didn’t do anything differently. Well, except for the three months before the exam of course, where about an hour or two of my life were dedicated to writing as many kanji as I could. Sigh! There is a video on Youtube by a Japanese high school student telling us that you only need one book to study. And yup, she’s right! I didn’t use the one she did though, but [this one](https://www.hanmoto.com/bd/isbn/9784816369193). It’s very concise, I can recommend it. My main method was:

– Watching and writing along with Youtube videos, specifically Kanken vocab lists (and regular entertainment, too)
– Going through most of the questions on [this website](https://kanken.jitenon.jp/)
– Writing every single item in the book into a notebook once
– Making extremely sparse Anki cards out of the questions I didn’t already now (which is of course most of them)
– Reviewing those daily

And additional tips would be

– Writing 部首 with red ink on dedicated pages
– Some physical flashcards for variety
– Saying 四字熟語 out loud
– Mnemonics for *everything*
– Being annoyed about not knowing common kanji and wanting to fix that
– Cramming a little with the DS game, for fun

Now for the more important part:

**Whether to pass**

OK, here’s my hot take. That was kind of not worth it! Let me justify and start by first considering the advantages. Mainly, I got a lot better at writing Japanese. Now, I less (!) frequently have the awkward moment of not knowing the kanji for common expressions. However, I still can’t write a lot of them – and instead stuff like 芳しい, which is *almost* useless. I would try for a lower kyuu if I had to start over again, maybe 3 or 4. I also feel like I appreciate the pitfalls of the language from a more native-like perspective now. I, too, now know 部首 of some kanji, like native high schoolers do. They’re completely arbitrary and not culturally significant, but the experience of learning them is very capital J Japanese. The 四字熟語 had a lot of highlights, to be fair.

I think being quite honest with myself, I took it at least in part to impress other people. But not only that, I have a slight suspition that this is one of the most common reasons for taking it. I don’t like that about myself, and I will not continue taking any Japanese tests in the future. If you like, please tell me about your exam experience and if you know this feeling.

Thank you for reading.

Edit: I still don’t know how to format Reddit posts. Also spelling.