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 national university like Tokyo or Kyoto University — which are the most affordable, which makes them the most popular, which creates academic competition to get in, which increases the academic stature of the schools — must take two, a standardized test called the Center Test, then the individual test for their school of choice. Because the Center Test is so important to the futures of so many young people, the subjects that appear on it help determine the educational direction of the country. One reason the Japanese aren’t generally proficient at using English despite six years of study is that the Center Test requires only knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and the ability to puzzle out listening comprehension questions; since using English to communicate in any way isn’t on the test, it’s completely ignored by students. Due to a happy linguistic accident, the name Kit Kat sounds similar to kitto katsu (“you will surely win”), which has made it the official snack mothers give to their kids to munch on while taking their tests. To commemorate the season, Nestle has just released the new Sakura Kit Kat for 2008, which we’ve got on the site now.
Random Questions about Japanese Society Answered
One site I visit from time to time is Quora, a place to ask questions and get answers on various...
