It's that time of year again, when hundreds of thousands of soon-to-be high school graduates are busy taking university entrance exams for the coming academic year. This activity is commonly known as juken (受験), and usually translated into English as "taking an examination." The translation is somewhat incomplete though, for at least two reasons. First, the type of exam usually referred to is an entrance examination to a school or a university, called nyūgaku shiken (入学試験) or just nyūshi (入試). Though there are countless other exams to which the term could in principle apply, when people say they are jukenchū (受験中, in the middle of juken), they are usually talking about an entrance exam to an educational institution rather than, say, a diploma for mountain climbing or deep-sea diving.
The second reason why "taking an examination" is slightly misleading is that in fact, doing juken is much more than just the act of sitting the exam. While the test itself in most cases won't take much longer than half a day, doing juken comprises all preparations that need to be done in advance of this day — weeks, months and maybe years even, during which the examinee and his or her family will be living in rather special circumstances. In other words, doing juken can be a whole way of life — and one that is very common in Japan at that.
The importance of juken activities can easily be understood from the ease with which the word combines with other words.