JLPT N5 vocabulary list — 228 words from real graded stories
Readings, romaji, and meanings — plus the story each word actually appears in.
Updated: 2026-07-17
This is a JLPT N5 vocabulary list with a difference: every one of its 228 words appears in a real, level-graded Japanese story you can listen to. Each row gives the word, its reading in kana, the romaji, and the English meaning — and links to the story where you can hear it used in context.
One honest note most lists skip: the JLPT has not published official vocabulary lists since 2010, so every N5 list you will find — including this one — is an estimate. Ours is built from the beginner tier of our story corpus, tagged N5 by frequency-and-level estimation. The upside of that approach: nothing here is list-filler; these are words you will actually meet in beginner Japanese.
The 228 N5 words, A to Z by romaji
How to actually learn N5 vocabulary (not just collect it)
Flashcards alone plateau fast, because a word memorized in isolation has nothing to stick to. The pattern that works is the loop: meet the word inside a story you mostly understand, notice what it does there, then let spaced repetition keep it warm. Comprehensible input supplies the meeting; Anki supplies the keeping.
That is why every word in this list links to a story. When you learn 友達 (tomodachi) from a story about friends meeting after school, the word arrives with a scene attached — and scenes are what memory is made of.
What about N5 kanji and grammar?
N5 vocabulary is the fastest lever, because listening comprehension at the beginner level is mostly a vocabulary problem. Kanji recognition rides along naturally as you read the transcripts — each word in our stories shows its kanji form with furigana-style readings, so you absorb the N5 kanji in context rather than drilling them as isolated characters.
Grammar works the same way in LingoTide: the beginner stories surface core N5 patterns (は/が, です/ます, particles, basic verb forms) inside sentences, with grammar notes exactly where each pattern occurs.
Where these words come from
The list is generated from our Japanese story corpus: words whose frequency-and-level estimation lands at N5, cross-referenced against the stories' vocabulary layers so each entry carries its source story. The table, the Anki deck, and the in-story glosses all come from the same data — they never drift apart.