Interesting times...
Shit! Two posts in one week? What the hel's going on?
Well, over the last couple of weeks, I've been following the big news in the English teaching world: NOVA (aka NO VAcation), the biggest and most infamous of the Eikaiwa mills in Japan, is going belly up. Of course, you all probably know more about it than me, since there's been ten times more coverage of the story in the Aussie news than here. Why that is is anyone's guess, but a few very cynical guesses would be: the Japanese Press doesn't want to "rock the boat", or possibly hasten its demise by panicking students; it only really affects foreigners anyway; or that it isn't really news compared to (another!) change of Prime Minister...
Anyway, if you have managed to miss it, here's a few links to what's been going down:
This - the story in a nutshell. People have been predicting NOVA's downfall for years, but few people had taken it seriously until recently, when a few teachers started complaining about being paid a day or two late. Then more teachers and longer delays, and now there are still teachers who haven't been paid for the September 15th payday. Worse still, some of the Japanese staff haven't been paid for months, but of course they haven't raised a stink about it. Anyone with any sense is now taking whatever holidays they have and looking for a new job. Of course, at NOVA, this still means that plenty of people are still working there in the vain hope that maybe, someday, things will turn around. The only official response so far is two announcements: one saying that they're going to close about 200 of their 900 branches around Japan, and another, noticeably lacking in details, about a possible large investment in the near future - a stalling tactic that's been used in the past before a big bankruptcy...
This - a translation from the Japanese Press about how NOVA's been deducting rent from teacher's salaries and then not paying their landlords, so that said teachers are suddenly receiving eviction notices. Quite another matter from their regular practice of putting three teachers in an apartment and collecting the full rent from each of them...
And this - a blog from someone at the coalface. Harrowing reading...
A major factor in the current situation has been NOVA's business plan; it signs up students for long-term contracts, the longer the contract, the bigger the discount, and then uses the money to open more branches, which worked up until it had completely saturated the market. Then, things started going wrong. Grossly overextended, it tried to support its bloated bulk the only way it knew how - to try to sign up more students. After awhile, it was making promises to those students that it couldn't keep. Said students complained to the government department that oversees the industry, sued, and won, so now they are under a six-month ban on signing long-term contracts. NOVA was already posting losses for the last few years, mainly because of its relentless expansion, and this ban took away their primary source of income. Suddenly, it had nearly a thousand schools, about 7000 staff, tens of thousands of students who had already paid for years worth of lessons (many of which have lost confidence in the company and are clamouring for refunds), and no money left. So now, in addition to not paying its staff or their rents, it also hasn't paid their health insurance, its advertising and printing bills, or the rent for many of its schools (hence the previously mentioned announcement). Apparently, there are still teachers being recruited overseas. Imagine, packing your life up for the starry-eyed adventure of a lifetime, landing in Japan, and finding your workplace closed with a padlock on the door and no apartment waiting for you. Meanwhile, Mr. Saruhashi, the President of NOVA corp., is busy squirreling away whatever cash is left and booking a ticket to Rio...
NOVA is gonna be living up to its name, if I may push the astronomical analogy to its limit, as a bloated red giant, ready to blow. The question is, will it throw off the majority of its bulk in a massive explosion and then see out its days as an incredibly dense ;) shade of its former self, or will it collapse under its own weight and disappear from view, having sucked in everything around it? Time will tell...
It's gonna get ugly, to say the least. But fear not for me, fair reader, as I wisely avoided said corporation like the plague, and there will soon be a whole lot of students looking for a new school...
And on the brighter side of things, in my last post, I mentioned the onset of autumn with its refreshingly mild weather, but I neglected to mention one of the best features of autumn. What might that be? The September moon? The leaves exploding in a riot of colour in a massive wave from Hokkaido to Kyushu? The rich autumn menu of specialty foods? All these things are nice enough, but the best thing is, of course, "boot season", which officially started on Monday. The strappy heels and frumpy maternity dresses of summer are now giving way to the short skirts and knee-high boots of autumn (and here's a sample!), later to be joined by the white fluffy jackets of winter. Ya gotta love Japan!
The one recent sour note in this season: up until last week, I'd only seen one pair of ugg boots in Japan, suitably coordinated with a full set of trackie-dacks. However, in the last week I've seen not once, but twice(!), the dreaded combination of ugg boots and denim skirt. I can only hope it remains confined to the Korean ghetto I live in...
Well, over the last couple of weeks, I've been following the big news in the English teaching world: NOVA (aka NO VAcation), the biggest and most infamous of the Eikaiwa mills in Japan, is going belly up. Of course, you all probably know more about it than me, since there's been ten times more coverage of the story in the Aussie news than here. Why that is is anyone's guess, but a few very cynical guesses would be: the Japanese Press doesn't want to "rock the boat", or possibly hasten its demise by panicking students; it only really affects foreigners anyway; or that it isn't really news compared to (another!) change of Prime Minister...
Anyway, if you have managed to miss it, here's a few links to what's been going down:
This - the story in a nutshell. People have been predicting NOVA's downfall for years, but few people had taken it seriously until recently, when a few teachers started complaining about being paid a day or two late. Then more teachers and longer delays, and now there are still teachers who haven't been paid for the September 15th payday. Worse still, some of the Japanese staff haven't been paid for months, but of course they haven't raised a stink about it. Anyone with any sense is now taking whatever holidays they have and looking for a new job. Of course, at NOVA, this still means that plenty of people are still working there in the vain hope that maybe, someday, things will turn around. The only official response so far is two announcements: one saying that they're going to close about 200 of their 900 branches around Japan, and another, noticeably lacking in details, about a possible large investment in the near future - a stalling tactic that's been used in the past before a big bankruptcy...
This - a translation from the Japanese Press about how NOVA's been deducting rent from teacher's salaries and then not paying their landlords, so that said teachers are suddenly receiving eviction notices. Quite another matter from their regular practice of putting three teachers in an apartment and collecting the full rent from each of them...
And this - a blog from someone at the coalface. Harrowing reading...
A major factor in the current situation has been NOVA's business plan; it signs up students for long-term contracts, the longer the contract, the bigger the discount, and then uses the money to open more branches, which worked up until it had completely saturated the market. Then, things started going wrong. Grossly overextended, it tried to support its bloated bulk the only way it knew how - to try to sign up more students. After awhile, it was making promises to those students that it couldn't keep. Said students complained to the government department that oversees the industry, sued, and won, so now they are under a six-month ban on signing long-term contracts. NOVA was already posting losses for the last few years, mainly because of its relentless expansion, and this ban took away their primary source of income. Suddenly, it had nearly a thousand schools, about 7000 staff, tens of thousands of students who had already paid for years worth of lessons (many of which have lost confidence in the company and are clamouring for refunds), and no money left. So now, in addition to not paying its staff or their rents, it also hasn't paid their health insurance, its advertising and printing bills, or the rent for many of its schools (hence the previously mentioned announcement). Apparently, there are still teachers being recruited overseas. Imagine, packing your life up for the starry-eyed adventure of a lifetime, landing in Japan, and finding your workplace closed with a padlock on the door and no apartment waiting for you. Meanwhile, Mr. Saruhashi, the President of NOVA corp., is busy squirreling away whatever cash is left and booking a ticket to Rio...
NOVA is gonna be living up to its name, if I may push the astronomical analogy to its limit, as a bloated red giant, ready to blow. The question is, will it throw off the majority of its bulk in a massive explosion and then see out its days as an incredibly dense ;) shade of its former self, or will it collapse under its own weight and disappear from view, having sucked in everything around it? Time will tell...
It's gonna get ugly, to say the least. But fear not for me, fair reader, as I wisely avoided said corporation like the plague, and there will soon be a whole lot of students looking for a new school...
And on the brighter side of things, in my last post, I mentioned the onset of autumn with its refreshingly mild weather, but I neglected to mention one of the best features of autumn. What might that be? The September moon? The leaves exploding in a riot of colour in a massive wave from Hokkaido to Kyushu? The rich autumn menu of specialty foods? All these things are nice enough, but the best thing is, of course, "boot season", which officially started on Monday. The strappy heels and frumpy maternity dresses of summer are now giving way to the short skirts and knee-high boots of autumn (and here's a sample!), later to be joined by the white fluffy jackets of winter. Ya gotta love Japan!
The one recent sour note in this season: up until last week, I'd only seen one pair of ugg boots in Japan, suitably coordinated with a full set of trackie-dacks. However, in the last week I've seen not once, but twice(!), the dreaded combination of ugg boots and denim skirt. I can only hope it remains confined to the Korean ghetto I live in...
posted by Ia Ftaghn at 11:24 pm
5 Comments:
UGH!! those boots are hideous. How can they still exist? Boots with a skirt fine, hel I do that all the time.
I think you could start a new trend, and give those mini-skirters a run for their money - Speedos and Ugg boots? Great combo.
Yeah, someone needs to tell them they were never meant to leave the house in them. It's getting a bit colder now, so I might have to go for some sheepskin Speedos... ;)
You could always trade the sheepskin speedos for a sheepskin Borat mankini?
So what is happening to the 8 million gaijin formerly working for those Nova schools? Must be hard for them all to try and get new language jobs.
I've been keeping up with the blog, and it seems that most have quit, and found new jobs, gone home, or gone on the dole. Branch after branch is closing down, since they don't have any teachers or students left. The vice-president of the company resigned today, and it looks like the president Saruhashi could be arrested for his shady last-ditch stock deal to try and stave off the now inevitable bankruptcy. Of course, the evening news has still been silent about it, but they'll have to say something soon...
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