"Twilight of the examination results boards: More and more universities using internet for quick notification": an article in the Asahi that does exactly what it says on the box.

You see, traditionally, each university in Japan posted their entrance examination results publicly on campus: each applicant had a number under which they took the exam(s), and if your number was on the results board, that meant you had passed and therefore been accepted into the university. If it wasn't there, time to visit your safety school.

(The appropriate telegrams to send to your folks in the country were SAKURA SAKU ["the cherry blossoms bloom"] and SAKURA CHIRU ["the cherry blossoms fall"] respectively.)

Since there's no technical reason why making a list of numbers public can't be done online, many universities (including more than half of all private institutions, according to the Asahi) are now doing just that. The article includes a picture of Nara Women's University's online results board on a cellphone screen, for those unable to picture what numbers might look like on the internet.

(Having said that, I can only find PDFs on Nara WU's non-cellphone homepage, so I guess they really did fail to devise a scheme for putting a list of numbers online. Awkward!)

Of course there are some institutions who have no intention of changing procedures. "For the students who have worked hard to get there, it's a once-in-a-lifetime scene of drama and intense emotion," says University of Tokyo entrance exam group head WATANABE Shōzō. "We think it's important [to preserve it]."

Meanwhile, Blenda magazine's top headline this month: "Glam, I'm home". Hmm.

"Is Glam my house?" wonders random woman I found via Google Shiori. To me it sounds more akin to "Honey, I'm home", making Glam my wife.