Saturday, March 31, was the final day of school for 47 graduates of the interestingly named I'M Personal College in Tokyo.
After the graduation ceremony in the morning, they had a party with around 60 invited guests in a Roppongi club, where they danced, snacked and partied just like new graduates do at such events in Japan. But there was a unique difference: more than half the graduates were stay-at-home mothers or housewives.
When the school opened in 1989, its one-year "business school" for housewives might have been an eyebrow-raiser. But 18 years on, it now has some 1,500 graduates, and its educational scope has widened from housewives in particular to women in general.