N5 Reading Comprehension (内容理解)
内容理解 (content comprehension) is the core reading task on JLPT N5: you read a passage — a diary entry, a short essay, a note — and answer a question about what it actually says. Unlike information retrieval, you can't just scan for a keyword; you have to follow the writer's meaning across the whole text.
How the question works
You get a self-contained passage followed by one question: why did someone do something, how do they feel, what does "this" refer to, which statement matches the text. Every answer is supported somewhere in the passage — the skill is holding the whole thing in your head, not translating word by word.
The wrong options are built to be plausible: they usually reuse words that appear in the passage but describe the wrong person, the wrong time, or a detail the text explicitly rules out. Recognising a familiar phrase is not the same as the option being correct.
Strategy & common traps
Read the question before the second read of the passage, so you know what you're looking for. Then locate the sentence that decides the answer and check it against each option. The classic trap is the "surface match" — an option that copies a phrase from the passage but attaches it to the wrong subject (what the teacher did vs. what Yattan did) or the wrong stage of the story (what was planned vs. what actually happened).
Watch cause-and-effect and contrast markers — せいで, おかげで, のに, それなのに, ところが. The passage's real point often turns on one of these connectors, and the distractors are the readings that ignore it.
About this N5 drill
Because real exam passages are copyrighted, these 6 passages are written from scratch for this site — short original stories starring our study cast, tuned to N5 vocabulary and grammar. The comprehension questions and their traps mirror the real 内容理解 format, and where a single grammar point decides the answer, the explanation links straight to its full guide.
What's different at N5
At N5 the passage is only a few short sentences and the question asks for one explicit fact — who did what, or what someone likes.
Practice now
ヤッタンは 毎朝 六時に おきます。おきてから、こうえんを はしります。それから、朝ごはんを 食べます。パンと たまごが すきです。ヤッタンは あさ、はじめに 何を しますか。
What does Yattan do first in the morning?