You cannot book JFT-Basic on the Japan Foundation website. The test is delivered by Prometric, and every seat in every country is booked through them. The Japan Foundation publishes the schedule; Prometric sells the seat.
That single fact accounts for most of the confusion around registration, so start there.
Before you start: the one thing that must be right
Your name on Prometric must match your passport exactly.
Not “close enough”. Exactly — same spelling, same order, same middle names or none. On test day the centre compares your identification against the name on your booking, and if they do not match you are turned away, the fee is gone, and there is no appeal at the counter.
This matters more in this audience than most. If your passport shows a single name with no surname, if your name is transliterated differently on different documents, or if your family name is recorded first on some papers and last on others, settle which version is on your passport before you create the account.
Fixing a name after payment is slow. Getting it right first takes two minutes.
The process
1. Create a Prometric account for your country
Prometric runs separate registration sites per region, and JFT-Basic sits under the Specified Skilled Worker test list. Search for your country’s Prometric SSW page rather than guessing a URL, and create the account there.
You will need a working email address you can actually open on test day. Your confirmation, and any last-minute change of venue, arrives by email and nowhere else.
2. Pick a test date and a centre
JFT-Basic runs, as a rule, every month. Seats are released on a schedule published in advance, and in the countries with the heaviest demand — Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines — popular dates fill within days of opening.
Two practical consequences:
- Book earlier than feels necessary. A seat you can move is worth more than a seat you cannot get.
- Check the centre address before you confirm, not after. “Kathmandu” can mean a building an hour from where you assumed it was.
3. Pay
The fee is set per country and the accepted payment methods differ too — some countries take cards, others require a local bank or over-the-counter payment. India’s published fee, as an example, is ₹3,540. Do not assume your country’s figure from someone else’s; check the amount on your own Prometric page.
Your seat is not held until payment clears. Where payment is made offline this is not instant, which is the second place people lose a date they thought they had.
4. Save the confirmation
Download it. Screenshot it. Email it to yourself. Do not rely on being able to log in to Prometric from a phone on a bad connection on the morning of the test.
What registration does not include
Registering does not teach you anything, and the fee is not refundable because you were not ready. Before you book, take a full-length timed test and see where you actually stand — our free JFT-Basic practice test scores you section by section in about fifteen minutes.
If two honest attempts land below 200, the cheaper decision is to book a later date.
After you book
Your provisional score appears on screen the moment you finish the test. The official result follows on the Prometric site within about five business days.
For what the score itself means — and why 200 is the number that matters — see what 200 points actually means. For what happens at the centre on the day, see JFT-Basic test day.
The short version
| Step | Where | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Create account | Prometric, your country’s site | Name must match passport exactly |
| Choose date | Prometric | Popular dates fill in days |
| Pay | Varies by country | Seat is not held until payment clears |
| Confirm | Save it offline | |
| Result | Prometric | Provisional on screen, official in ~5 business days |
Details change, and they change per country. Treat this as the shape of the process and confirm the specifics on your own Prometric page before you pay.