Right now it’s juken (test) season in Japan, when hundreds of thousands of high school students take the university entrance exams they’ve prepared for over the past three years. The tests that each student must take differ depending on what school they’re shooting for: students trying to get into a prestigious national university like Tokyo or Kyoto University must take both a standardized exam called the Center Test plus the individual test for that school. Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the industrialized world, and as the dearth of new children has started to filter up to the university system, more schools will be chasing fewer students, resulting in lower academic standards for all but the top institutions. Due to a happy linguistic accident, the name Kit Kat sounds similar to the Japanese phrase kitto katsu (“you will surely win”), which has made it the official snack mothers give to their kids to munch on while studying. To commemorate the season, Nestle has released a cool Kit Kat coffee mug + chocolate set to help anyone who is studying hard this winter. You will surely pass your test!
“Test season” is a stressful time for students hoping to pass their entrance exams.
