A different kind of private lesson

When I worked for NOVA, it was pretty clear that the way the company made money was by lending students the money to buy lesson packages from the school at usurious rates of interest. There were always rumors that the company president, when he and his brother parted company over their first language-teaching firm, had gone to the Yakuza for the money to start up what became NOVA. I'm guessing that might have been more than just a rumor and that maybe the teachers and students weren't the only ones who got stung.

2 gangsters held over holding of ex-Nova boss

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Two members of the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate were arrested on the spot Monday on suspicion of confining the former president of the failed language school chain Nova Corp. inside a Tokyo hotel, police said.

According to senior police officials, the two men confined Nozomu Sahashi, 58, who has been sentenced to 3-1/2 years' imprisonment for professional embezzlement, inside a room of a hotel in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, from about 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday.

On the same day at about 3 p.m., investigators rescued Sahashi and arrested the two men. Sahashi, who is currently appealing the ruling, did not suffer any injury.

(Sep. 30, 2009)

If the mobsters had only had the presence of mind to sell tickets to former teachers for their little chat with Mr. Sahashi, they could have gotten back all their money in one fell swoop by selling out Toyko Dome at 500 yen a seat. (I'm sure there are still a few veterans who remember being paid, in cash, the first and only bonus NOVA ever paid its teachers - a nice, shiny 500 yen coin to mark the new millenium - I think I bought a beer and pack of cigarettes with mine)

Cue the sound of screeching brakes

So, I'm doing my usual morning news surf finding the usual stuff - war, famine, disease and politics and I notice this story about a memorial for Walter Cronkite at the Lincoln Center: Obama spoke and called for journalists to do a better job. Bill Clinton talked about Walter offering to take him sailing during the media feeding frenzy of the Lewinsky scandal. Katie Couric and Tom Browkaw, neither of whom should be considered qualified to carry Cronkite's lunch for him on an assignment, both paid tribute as did moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, professional curmudgeon Andy Rooney, CBS honcho Les Moonves, CBS News president Sean McManus, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart...waitaminute! Mickey Hart?

There were other light moments. Mickey Hart, the former Dead drummer and Cronkite's late-in-life pal who provided entertainment, along with Jimmy Buffett and Wynton Marsalis, invoked a musical discussion he had with Cronkite after one of the band's concerts. "Mickey," Cronkite asked, "how will we know when we have the groove?"

Well suck me dry and call me "Dusty" - I never would have seen that coming! It's kind of like finding out your minister used to be a roadie for the Stones or your dad gave guitar lessons to Jimi Hendrix. Walter always did ask the right questions. Check him out about 2 minutes into this little video.

Karmic wheel turns

Oh the sweet, sweet schadenfreude!

Ex-Nova president sentenced to 3 1/2 years for embezzling
OSAKA — The founder and former president of English conversation school operator Nova Corp, Nozomu Sahashi, was sentenced Wednesday to three years and six months in prison without suspension for embezzling 320 million yen in Nova’s employment benefit funds.

The Osaka District Court rejected the claim by the 57-year-old that he is not guilty or should receive a suspended sentence as he had no intention to gain profits nlawfully. Prosecutors had asked for a five-year prison term.The ruling said Sahashi embezzled the accumulated employment benefit fund by transferring it to a bank account of a Nova subsidiary on July 20, 2007.

Sahashi admitted during trial proceedings that he used the money to reimburse language lesson fees people paid before terminating their contracts.‘‘There is no room for leniency in the defendant’s practice of using accumulated employment benefits to address the financial crisis while having no certain prospects of returning them,’’ said Presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi.The defense counsel for Sahashi said that the court did not give sufficient explanation against their argument, while declining to comment on whether they will appeal the sentence.

Aside from the criminal case, Sahashi faces several lawsuits that have been filed by employees who lost their jobs without receiving salaries, and students who got no refunds since Nova went bust in October 2007.In the latest case, a bankruptcy administrator filed a damages suit on Aug 19, seeking 2.1 billion yen in compensation for breach of trust, claiming Sahashi purchased equipment used for remote English lesson services against Nova’s business plan.

Coincidently, the sentence is almost the same amount of time I served working for that bent, moneygrubbing, thieving douchebag.
If there is any justice in this world, Sahashi will serve his entire sentence in a 6-foot by 6-foot poorly lit and unventilated glass room furnished with a round table 4 feet across and four folding chairs. A doorbell will chime every 40 minutes and a trio of guards will come in, demand to know why he came to prison, declare that their hobbies are "sleeping, driving, going to shopping and cleaning the room" and then either mutter incoherently, ask deeply personal questions about his sex life or impart deeply personal, often frightening personal information of their own, such as "I strangled my child's pet," "I think I might be bisexual," "I use a mirror to look up high school girls' skirts on the train" and the ever-popular "I've stopped taking the medication they gave me at the psychiatric clinic." At least one of the three guards should have breath that would peel paint and another should be in serious need of a bath. The third should make a point of coughing in Sahashi's face as much as possible. At least once a day, a four-year-old should be brought into cell to punch Sahashi in the scrotum and then scream non-stop at the top of its lungs for 40 minutes.
And he should have to wear a tie all day, every day, no matter how hot or humid it is - and no unbuttoning the collar. Ever.
And even then, the lying, larcenous, smug, arrogant shit-eating weasel still owes me six months as far as I'm concerned. I think everyone who ever worked for Nova or was ever a student at Nova should get a gift certificate good for one free opportunity to kick Sahashi in the yarbles.

(Note: This is a reposting from memory of the original post that was eaten by blogger when I tried to spellcheck it a few hours ago. It may vary slightly from the original posting put up last night)

Mind and eye bending

The break of the curveball, winner in the top illusion 2009 contest

Dylan wrote every popular song of the last 35 years

Little Bobby Zimmerman  and his rock and roll combo have a new recording coming out at the end of April. Advance word is that "Together through Life" is like "Modern Times" only bluesier and more raw. 

So, perhaps there is a god after all.

Check out the advance reviews. And check out Bob's super slick website that allows you to listen to anything off any of his albums.

Global jam session

Watch and then go learn how, no matter how cool you thought this was, it's even cooler than that.

Much of the money raised is going to support centers for Tibetan refugees in India and music and arts programs in South Africa, but even if none of the money was going to charity, this would still be a very, very cool idea.

Special thanks to Jackson Street Books for pointing this out.

Where else would you expect to find a Spider but on the Web?
I am, as the man himself would say, "as happy as a pig in Parliament" to find that Spider Robinson, creator of Callahan's Place (the fictional bar that launched a million online communities) and rancouter extraordinaire has a PODCAST. While a blog by Spider would have been cause for celebration, one can hardly expect somebody who make a living by his pen to start giving it away for free. In fact, the podcast is a better forum for him because Spider is the kind of storyteller who predates the written word. He has a natural flair for spinning a yarn and the timing, expression and voice of a born radio host. Somebody get the brass at CBC onto this, because with the right producers you could have the second coming of Peter Gzowski or Garrison Keillor, or at the very least a seasonal fill-in for Stuart McLean.

And if that weren't enough, finding his podcast lead to his website which lead me in turn to one of the coolest things ever. Way back when, Spider and his wife, dancer and choreographer Jeanne wrote a little book called "Stardance" about inventing zero-gravity dance and using it to communicate with aliens. The book, which spawned a couple of sequels to form the inevitable trilogy, won just about every award there is in science fiction and with good reason. Now, a few decades later, Jeanne is getting a chance to try out the whole idea in real life. Go. Watch. Marvel. The future has arrived.

Ding, Dong the Wicked Witch Pink Bunny is Dead

Well, it has finally happened - the crooked, exploitive, madhouse I spent my first four years in Japan working at has finally come crashing down.

The place has been run like a mob-owned whorehouse pretty much since day one, but karma finally caught up with them this spring when a bunch of students complained to the government that the company was not living up to its promise that they could book lesson "anytime" and that when they tried to get a refund for their prepaid lessons, the company refused to give them a full refund. The trade ministry made them offer full refunds and forbid them to sell certain types of lesson contracts for a period. Since the company - the McDonalds of the language school industry in Japan - has been trying to triple its number of school over the last couple of years and has been spending money as fast as it came in the door on a variety of ill-advised projects and company jets for the president, this basically buggered the company's cash flow. Salaries were late in July, August and September for teachers and there was no pay in October. Many of the Japanese staff haven't been paid since mid summer.

The founder has been involved in a number of very dodgy stock deals to try to drum up enough cash to keep the wheels turning and aside from a bunch of really stupid faxes, has dropped out of sight since August. As more and more teachers stopped coming to work since they weren't getting paid, it became harder for students to book lessons and more and more asked for refunds.

Not that most of them have seen a single yen in refunds yet. Nova quit paying its bills months ago. Many of the teachers rent apartments from Nova, which sublets the units from landlords. The company has been deducting the rent from teachers paycheques, but hasn't been paying the landlords and as a result several hundred teachers have been turfed out of their homes in the last two months.

Nova employees glad to be off hot seat

The Yomiuri Shimbun

In the wake of Nova Corp.'s filing for court protection Friday, employees said that although they were anxious over their livelihoods, they were relieved to no longer have to cope with a barrage of complaints from students and teachers.

Nova, the nation's largest English-language school chain, applied for protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law with the Osaka District Court with debt of about 50 billion yen and suspended operations of all its schools.

Employees, mainly in their 20s, remained at their workplaces until the last moment, while many teachers had already stopped reporting to work over delays in salary payments. Lesson fees were also refunded to students who canceled their contracts with Nova. An employee in her 20s, who was manager of a branch in an office district in the Tokyo metropolitan area, said she began working for Nova after graduating from university as she wished to help people who wanted to learn English.

But she soon became dissatisfied with her position when she was instructed by the headquarters to try to get prospective students to sign lesson contracts.

As the number of branches increased around 2004 to 2005, more emphasis was placed on getting prospective students to sign contracts. In one case, one of the woman's colleagues was reprimanded for opposing a superior over the policy.

In June, when Nova was punished by the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry over lesson contracts and cancellation problems, she believed that Nova would recover.

She heard that the police had to be called to another branch because a student had become angry to the point of violence, apparently over a lesson contract dispute, but the headquarters offered no assistance in the matter. "I still told myself that I should hang on as long as I was getting paid," she said.

Foreign teachers started not showing up for lessons in mid-September when their salary payments were delayed. Consequently, dozens of complaints poured in, creating chaos for the company's inexperienced receptionists. One staff member complained of not being able to afford food, while another had been reduced to tears every day before she finally collapsed and stopped coming to the office.

===

Stock speculators involved

OSAKA--A group of stock speculators charged by the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of violating the Securities and Exchange Law, had been involved in a Nova capital expansion plan, the Yomiuri has learned.

The plan had been promoted by former Nova President Nozomu Sahashi, who was dismissed Thursday. Sahashi's financial problems may have led him to contact the group, as such groups control stock prices to gain illegal profits. Nova's court-appointed administrators stated that the move was grounds for Sahashi's dismissal.

According to sources, Sahashi had contacted the group led by Haruo Nishida, 57, an investment adviser who was arrested by the prosecutors on Oct. 12 on suspicion of manipulating the price of a construction company stock.

Nova announced on Oct. 9 it would issue stock warrants facilitating the purchase of 200 million new stocks, nearly three times the stock that had been issued, to two investment funds, with a view to securing about 6.4 billion yen. The funds are located in the Virgin Islands.

Nishida is said to have known people related to the investment funds and invited investors to Nova's plan before it was announced.

(Oct. 28, 2007)

The story above is very much the sanitized version of NOVA's flat out evil nature. Imagine the Bush administration running a chain of language schools in which people like Mike "Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown were the branch managers and Dick Cheney was in charge of the education department. Only with more evil, incompetence and general skullduggery and staffed by a lot of semi-literate Australians on working holidays.



For the real skinny on the whole sordid tale, the best "teachers gone wild" and "Freaky Student Stories" the best place to look is the forums at Lets Japan. Which is where I found all this art.

More Schadenfreudilliousness!
Early predictions had His Nibs Conrad Black, Lord Tubby of Fleet Street, being hit with a sentence of not more than three years, despite his conviction on three counts of fraud and one of obstruction of justice. The maximum sentence would be five years for each fraud conviction and 20 years for trying to destroy the evidence stored at his company's Toronto headquarters. A tidy 35 years if he get the maximum and since it's U.S. federal time, Tubby would have to serve 85% of it thanks to decades of conservatives "getting tough on crime and ending our revolving-door prison system."
Word now is that instead of the earlier predicted 1 to 3 years, he could be looking at 10-20 years in the crowbar hotel. How's that Canadian citizenship you renounced looking to you now Lord Pork Chop of New Fish? How you enjoy the creamed chipped beef and lima beans -- remember, if you give them your dessert they may not shank you in the exercise yard just for shits and giggles.
The long story in the Globe and Mail on the plucky-little-billionaire-who-could's effort to show a stiff upper lip and convince the Canadian power elite of his blamelessness ends on a paragraph that is music to my ears:

Prosecutors estimate that even using the $3-million figure, he faces 15 to 20 years in prison. One source familiar with the case had this to say when asked about how much time he can expect: "There is no way Black is going to get less than 10 years."

At least he will be able to get Lady Barbarella that handcrafted vanity licence plate she's always wanted.

Sweet, sweet schadenfreude
Karma's a bitch, ain't it your Lordship? Conrad Black has been convicted on three counts of mail fraud and one of obstruction of justice -- he's has appealed of course, but when the sentence is handed down in November Lord Black of Crossharbour is said to be looking a one to three years, though under the law he could get as many as 25 years. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Maybe we should all chip in and get him a present, you know, like a video , or something else he can really use:




Must read addendum!Dr. Dawg lays it all out in terms that even his Lordship would appreciate

Added bonus! The BBC reports that Lord Tubby could end up on the dole. How likely is it that Barbarella Amiel is already shopping for husband number five or at least a new sugar daddy? At her age, I guess that would be a new sugar great-granddaddy.
And if that isn't enough, Himself has been turfed out of the British Conservative Party and could lose his peerage.

If I had a million dollars...
I'd buy you and me a drink. A tad pricey, but probably damned good hooch. I'm more or less an atheist, but if there is a God, when you die and go to heaven, this is what it has on its breath.

Plenty of surprises up its sleeves

By Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

The Prestige

5 stars out of five

Dir: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson

Watch carefully, for things are not as they seem in The Prestige. Writer and director Christopher Nolan's hand is quicker than the audience's collective eye, and while he provides plenty of clues along the way, surprising plot twists abound on the way to a stunning finale.

The structure of the entire film is set up in the opening scene, in which Mr. Cutter, a designer and builder of stage illusions played by Michael Caine, explains to a young girl the three stages of any magic trick: the pledge, the turn and the prestige.

Showing her a caged canary, Cutter explains how the magician shows you something ordinary. The second step is to make the ordinary object do something extraordinary, he tells her, collapsing the small cage and making the bird disappear.

"Now if you're looking for the secret, you won't find it. That's why there's a third act called the prestige. This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before," Cutter tells the girl, producing the canary from thin air.

The girl turns out to be the daughter of Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), a famous magician facing the hangman for the murder of his archrival and former friend, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman).

Set in late Victorian era London, The Prestige follows Borden and Angier from their early days as friends learning the tricks of their trade. When an escape goes wrong, killing Angier's wife, he seeks revenge on Borden. As the years pass, the two become famous rivals and the competition becomes obsessive with each seeking to sabotage the other. When Borden comes up with an inexplicable, showstopping illusion, Angier goes to exceptional lengths to duplicate and finally, with the help of mysterious genius inventor Nikola Tesla (an understated but magnetic David Bowie), to outshine Borden. Who will take the final bow, however remains a mystery until the last moments of the film.

As he did in Memento, Nolan very deftly manipulates the audience much like a magician, misdirecting our attention to spring surprise after surprise.

While a lesser film might have relied completely on a clever script with a surprise ending (see the works of M. Night Shyamalan), The Prestige provides the total package: a subtle, multilayered script (cowritten with his brother, Jonathan Nolan), smart dialogue, terrific performances by all the principal cast, smooth pacing, beautiful atmospheric cinematography and a jaw-dropping, mind-blowing final act worthy of the film's name.

(From the Jun. 9 edition of The Daily Yomiuri)

Another weekend, another barbecue
Took the curvaceous and emminently capable Ms. Rev. Paperboy and the youngin' up into the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture this weekend to camp out on a mountain top at The Northlands with 50 of our closest friends from my old watering hole in Kawasaki, Moby Dick, (named for the drum solo, not the whale) the friendliest bar in Japan, if not the world.

We took the train up early Saturday morning and my big little brother Take-chan picked us up at the station and whisked up up the mountain for a day of eating, drinking, loafing in the sun, barbecuing, drinking, playing music, and more drinking. The next day we got up to bright, bright (I have never wanted sunglasses so much as I did when I stepped out of the cabin - did I mention I'd been drinking the night before?) sunny weather, let the kids feed the horses at the riding stable (priceless). After checking out of the campground we took a short, scenic, vomit-filled (Anyone know what the Japanese for "Gravol" is? Dramamine doesn't seem to work on my kids, in fact, I suspect it is making them sick) drive through the mountains we stopped for soba and then took the train home.

Special thanks to Kaki-san, Takarada-san, the G-Tribe Motorcycle Club, Linn-chan and Ayu-chan for drumming and babysitting above and beyond the call; wheel man and soup chef Take-sama and of course our gracious host The Chief.

To paraphrase the master (and this is the real list): "We had 5 cases of Heineken, 2 bottles of Captain Morgan's dark rum, 2 bottles of Blanton's Single Barrel bourbon, a bottle of Black Bush, 2 bottles of Beefeater, 2 bottles of Jose Cuervo Gold, a bottle of Bacardi white rum, 5 litres of red wine, 5 litres of white wine, a bottle of Glenlivet, a bottle of Kalua, a bottle of Amaretto, a bottle of cassis, ten litres of assorted sake, a half dozen different kinds of sho-chu, 5 kilos of Rev. Paperboy's homemade spicy Italian sausage, 3 kilos of chicken, 4 kilos of assorted beef, 2 tuna heads, a dozen baguettes, a broad assortment of salads, pickles, olives, cheeses, chocolates, 'smores and 6 litres of Take's fabulous vegetable chicken-sausage soup.
The only thing that worried me was the tuna heads. There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man drunk on sake in the depths of a tuna binge."





I'm not claiming we drank all the aforementioned booze - though I think I had the last beer the next morning - but we certainly put a dent in it. I know we went through about half of the Irish whisky just er...toasting my sausage -- which isn't nearly as dirty as it sounds.

My big break
I've been asked by the proprieters (well, Dave anyways -- maybe this is his little practical joke on the others to make sure they miss him while he's on vacation) to help blogsit over at The Galloping Beaver for a couple of weeks. I'll be joining Allison from Creekside and West End Bound from Moving to Vancouver in keeping an eye on things over there. The Galloping Beaver draws a lot more hits than the Woodshed, so this could be my ticket out of the blogging ghetto -- I'll try to remember all you little people kindly when I become a big blogging star and get invited to the big blogging ethics panels on CNN. In the meantime, anything I post there I will also crosspost here. The Woodshed will still offer some exclusive content in the form of book and music reviews.

Ding Dong


I've been trying very hard all day to take the high road and not to gloat, cheer or pile-on. It should always be a sad occasion when someone dies, but in the case of Jerry Falwell I'll make an exception. I'll also admit to having cracked a smile when they hung Saddam and when I heard Nixon and Reagan had finally croaked. Evil crap-sacks, each and every one. The ad is from Hustler --Jerry famously sued them and lost. He is the bastard who got the burgeoning fundementalist Christian movement tied in with the Republican party with his Moral Majority (all together now: "it was neither") movement starting in 1979. He got St. Ronnie of Raygun elected, he got Bush senior elected, he had a lot to do with getting Clinton impeached by the House of Representatives (though not as much as Clinton did, let's be fair). Without him there would be no politically active fundementalist movement -- no Ralph Reed, no James Dobson, probably no abortion clinic bombers either. He blamed 9/11 on homosexuals, the ACLU, abortion-providers and People for the American Way. He was a hate-spewing homophobic, racist, sexist bigot and if there is a hell, he is smoking a turd in it right now. And I for one, am glad.
That's right blogging Tories, CNN and conservatard everywhere, my name is Rev.Paperboy and I'm an angry, intolerant, godless, anti-Christian, liberal blogger. SFW?

Artistic Synergy
In the course of researching a review of Faking It-- The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, a great book for starting arguments among musicians and music geeks, but one I had some problems with (the review will come out Saturday, wait for it) I checked out the authors' blog and found this gem of an MP3. I don't know who the mimic is or whether it could actually be Mr. Zimmerman, but you ain't heard nothing until you've heard Bob Dylan sing the Dr. Seuss classic, Green Eggs and Ham