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.

Listen and repeat: Karma's a bitch, ain't it?

Branch closings dim Nova's future
The Yomiuri Shimbun
English-conversation school operator Nova Corp.'s planned closure of about 50 branches at the end of this month is indicative of the severe business climate the company faces, following a number of student contract cancellations and an order from the government in June to partially suspend its operations.
The firm, the largest of its kind in the nation, has delayed paying some foreign teachers' salaries.
Nova plans to reduce costs by cutting personnel after the branch closures are completed. However, Nova's prospects remain uncertain.
According to the company, Nova had 418,000 students as of March 31, a more than 10 percent drop from the same time last year, due to former students filing a series of high-profile suits demanding the firm refund their tuition fees after they canceled lesson contracts.
Nova has also been hampered by a decline in the number of new students, following the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's order in June to partially suspend its operations.
Nova listed revenues of 9.2 billion yen from April to June in fiscal
2007, a 31.9 percent drop from the same period last year. The firm had an after-tax deficit during the same period of 2.4 billion yen.
The firm's delay in salary payments to some foreign teachers has caused a great deal of anxiety. "I'm worried about what's going on," a foreign Nova teacher in Osaka said.

Lesson plan for level four advanced students
Target Language: Use of tags for emphasis and as interogatives.
Intro: Discuss students' past experience with renewing lesson packages and using all point before contract expiration. (Alternative: Speculation "What would you do if this school closed?" "What would you do if your company failed to pay your salary?"
Drills: Listen and repeat - Nova has had some problems lately, haven't they?
Nova has been cheating its students, haven't they?
Nova hasn't paid its teachers this month, have they?
Substitution drill: This school is in a fiery tailspin/up shit creek without a paddle/ neck deep in the big muddy, isn't it? (explain idioms as needed, get students to speculate on possible meanings or supply own metaphors)
This was only a matter of time/bound to happen/simple karma wasn't it?
This school is run by thieves/wankers/the yakuza, isn' t it?
Role play: A Nova teacher has not been paid and has no money. They are complaining to a Nova manager and demanding their money. The manager must come up with excuses not to pay (ie: the ministry of consumer affairs ate our account books, didn't they? The corporate jet needed repairs, didn't it?) and the teacher must come up with examples of what will happen to them or to the manager if they aren't paid. (ie: I'll be thrown out of my apartment, won't I? You don't think you'll get away with this, do you?)

(see if you can guess where I used to work and how I liked it)

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)

Karma's a bitch - Payback edition
Once upon a time, I worked here. I didn't like it much, mostly because the people I worked for were, not to put too fine a point on it, dishonest pricks. Naturally, I was very upset last fall when all these bad things happened to worse people. Imagine how I feel today.

Police to arrest ex-president of Nova over embezzlement
The Yomiuri Shimbun
OSAKA--Osaka prefectural police plan to arrest on Tuesday former President Nozomu Sahashi of the failed language school chain Nova Corp. on suspicion of instructing the firm's accountants to misappropriate the reserve funds of the firm's employees, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.
Regarding "Ochanoma Ryugaku," a system through which Nova students could take lessons from home, the police have learned a large amount of money was sent from Nova to a communications firm owned by Sahashi.
According to sources close to the investigation and others, Sahashi instructed employees in late July to transfer 320 million yen from the reserve fund to Nova's bank account through a Nova Kikaku account he once managed.
Meanwhile, the Osaka Labor Bureau will send papers to prosecutors by the end of the week on Nova and Sahashi, over failing to pay its workers about 105 million yen, equivalent to salaries for about 400 Japanese employees and foreign instructors.

Happy Feet - Penguin Dance - The top video clips of the week are here

Anyone else for champagne?

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)

A shitty way to learn a language

When I first came to Japan, I came to teach English at a chain of school that was to linguistics what Mickey D's is to haute cuisine. Nova talked a good game, but their real selling point was that they had the lowest prices if you bought enough lessons at once and had schools at every station, which means they are thicker on the ground in a city like Tokyo or Osaka than Tim Horton's in Toronto. They were the biggest employers of foreigners in the country with hundreds of schools and thousands of employees.

It was very much a place ruled by moronic policy manuals and systems designed to squeeze as much money out of customers as possible and there is little good to be said about it. At least I wore a necktie instead of a hairnet, but if you weren't in the glass-walled closet classroom kissing ass flirting entertaining teaching a group of one to three Johns suckers students, or trying to get toddlers to stop punching you in the nuts crying for their mommy being scared of the big pale-skinned blue-eyed giant learn English, you were expected to be in the parlour Voice room kissing ass flirting sarcastically abusing shaking your moneymaker entertaining facilitating English communication among the waiting psychopaths, suckers, random strangers and mental patients off the the street and no I'm not exaggerating students. 

Too make an already too long story shorter, NOVA corkscrewed in for a landing last fall thanks to the sleazy, grasping fuckery of its president and owner, throwing thousands of young foreign teachers out of work after not paying them for a month or more. Suffice to say if this man were to walk into the wrong bar today, he'd get his ass kicked until his nose bled, but I digress.

This week I finally found out what happened to all the lame textbooks the schools had been using since the early 1980s

For those who can't make out the label, this is Let's study English! toilet paper.

Not as sorry as he's going to be

Keddy says he's sorry for referring to unemployed as 'no-good
bastards'
By Alison Auld (CP)
HALIFAX, N.S. — A Nova Scotia Conservative MP who stunned the opposition and advocates for the homeless after referring to the unemployed in Halifax as "no-good bastards" apologized Tuesday for the comments.
In a statement, Gerald Keddy said he did not mean to offend Nova Scotians who are out of work.

I guess it takes one to know one, Mr. Keddy, but people who are soon to live in glass houses might want to watch it with the stone throwing. I'm sure we will hear about this one again come election time and I bet I know who those "no-good bastards" will be voting against.

Tonight on Virtually Speaking

Tonight at 9 p.m. eastern/6 p.m. Pacific, host and all-around smart and funny guy Jay Ackroyd speaks with Tom Levenson.

TOM LEVENSON teaches science writing at MIT, posts at his own blog, The Inverse Square and at Balloon Juice. He and Jay will talk about science in contemporary politics, and the 17th century origins of the modern economy. To comment and question from the studio audience, join us at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtually%20Speaking/164/111/25

LISTEN on the web at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2011/01/28/tom-levenson-virtually-speaking-with-jay-ackroyd
More info at http://blog.virtually-speaking.com/ABOUT TOM LEVENSON Professor, Program Head and Director of the Graduate Program, Techniques, forms and traditions of contemporary writing, media and communications.
About Tom's book 'Newton and the Counterfeiter' NEAL STEPHENSON says of Tom's book:
'Newton and the Counterfeiter is both a fascinating read and a meticulously researched historical document: a combination difficult to acheive and arely seen....Recommended for anyone who wants to know the real story behind this astonishing but largely overlooked chapter of scientific history.'
http://bit.ly/i0UMSX


Prof Thomas Levenson is the winner of Walter P. Kistler Science Documentary Film Award, Peabody Award (shared), New York Chapter Emmy, and the AAAS/Westinghouse award. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, Discover, The Sciences. Winner of the 2005 National Academies Communications Award for Origins. The executive producer of the "Origins" miniseries (NOVA), Tom wrote, produced and directed part four: "Back to the Beginning." The series depicts four areas of cosmic evolution: the formation of the Earth and planets, the rise of life, the search for extraterrestrial life forms and the beginning of the universe.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/program-3114.html
http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/
http://www.balloon-juice.com/
http://www.twitter.com/TomLevenson  
Visit Virtually Speaking at: http://virtuallyspeaking.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network
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Tonight, on a very special episode of ...

Well, you can leave your sitcom name suggestions in the comments (The Frostbacks? Flyboy and Sureshot? The Pitbull and the POW?) but this latest rumour is proof that the GOP brain trust is being run by people who have watched way too much television --and I don't mean 60 Minutes and Nova.

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

It worked on Rhoda, it worked a couple of times on Friends, it worked on Cheers, it worked on Coronation Street, on the Office, on Beverly Hill 90120 ---almost every television series that lasted more than a single season has a wedding episode. Whenever TV writers are running out of ideas, need a big season-closing climax or just need to get their audience back you can bet that somebody is going to be getting hitched and wacky hijinks will ensue.

And if the wedding plan doesn't work out, maybe McCain can offer Ted McGinley a cabinet post or go waterskiing or take the whole family to Hawaii or London or adopt an adorable orphan-- I know, why not a speech where McCain and Palin sing a duet of "Summer Loving" from Grease!

Welcome to my nightmare

From the Windsor Star we glean another good reason to hope my inlaws don't get sick. Not just because I love them and wish them well, but because going back to care for them could become a major problem.

A Leamington couple who flew to Mexico in June to deal with a personal tragedy have found themselves mired in a new nightmare: the bureaucracy of the Canadian immigration system.

The married couple, Gerhard Wiebe and Maria Eugenia Vazquez Cortes, travelled to Mexico June 1 to arrange family affairs after the death of Cortes' mother in the central Mexican city of Tlaxcala. But when they tried to return to Canada on July 1, Cortes learned she would not be permitted back in.

"They won't let her come back," said Wiebe. "She is stuck down there."

(snippity, snip, snip)

Before they flew to Mexico, Wiebe, 53, said they checked with the immigration ministry to ensure Cortes would be allowed back into Canada.

"They said there's no problem because I have a sponsorship application," Wiebe said. All they would have to do is apply for another visitor's visa from the Canadian embassy in Mexico.

But when they did, it was denied.

Wiebe said the officer at the embassy wasn't convinced that, if Cortes' sponsorship application was rejected in Canada, she would return to her home country.

Now, that application can't even be completed because Cortes isn't on Canadian soil.

Now, I don't know all the exact details of the case, but one would expect that given the couple have been married for a few years already, approval of the application for permanent residence should be a foregone conclusion, assuming the woman doesn't have an extensive criminal record as a drug mule or something.  Apparently, this is not the case. My wife is in the process of applying to become a permanent resident right now and we were told the six month visitor's visa could be renewed repeatedly while the application is being considered (a process that can take longer than a year), so you can see how  this story might make me a bit apprehensive to say the very least.

The question is, given that ministry assured them returning would not be a problem prior to their departure, can the federal immigration service be sued for breach of promise? I doubt it. Immigration officials and Canada Customs officers have a great deal of authority which they can exercise in an arbitrary way and I am not at all confident that the present government is inclined to curb those powers or provide any kind of meaningful oversight. 

My experiences with both services thus far have been terrific and I have no complaints at all. Quite the contrary, the Customs officers who dealt with us and our various baggage and shipped belongings when we moved to Canada this summer were never less than cordial, helpful and efficient. Ditto for the Immigration officer we spoke with at Pearson Airport and the clerk at the citizenship application processing center in Sydney, Nova Scotia, I spoke with on the phone to clarify some detail on my children's applications for proof of Canadian citizenship.

But stories like this one make me nervous and I wonder what can be done for Mr. Wiebe and Ms. Cortes.

(a tip of the toque to CK at Sister Sage's Musings)

Tweet

How Canada is different from the United States
example #436, 202

What the heck, it worked for the Spartans, eh?


Military has first gay wedding in N.S.
Canadian Press
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

HALIFAX -- The Canadian military is marking its first gay wedding.

Two men, who do not want to be identified, exchanged vows in a small ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood in western Nova Scotia.

It was the first time the military presided over a same-sex union after introducing guidelines in 2003 dealing with the contentious issue.

The two men, one a sergeant, the other a warrant officer, were married last month by a United Church minister because the base chaplain is Anglican and couldn't officiate.

see the whole story at here

or here

And a snappy salute to Sgt. Canuck over at Jesus General for the recon work, well done soldier!

Holy Shit(s)
Christian Nation
"Their mission is not simply to save souls. The goal is to mobilize evangelical Christians for political action to return society to what they call "the biblical worldview of the Founding Fathers." Some speak of "restoring a Christian nation." Others shy from that phrase, but agree that the Bible calls them not only to evangelize, but also to transform the culture."

And then there is this dimbulb who despite the fact that several people died considers it a happy ending that he now has a summer home in Nova Scotia. For a full parsing of the good parson's sermon, have a look at the Poor Man - especially the comments.