In which it is revealed that I am now a best-selling author and a new Spiritual Leader of the Moment(tm) is crowned

Our Man in Abiko, who laboured at the same Great Metropolitan Newspaper that I did for many years, though at a different time than I, is someone I have known slightly for some time now. I came across his eponymous blog looking for other expat bloggers in Tokyo and we discovered out mutual employment history rather by accident. 

He has been a supporter of the Woodshed for several years now and even posted some of my Sunday sermons way back when. On a personal level, Our Man was very supportive and encouraging when I was transitioning from "Staff Writer"to "layabout expat" and then to "former expat." 

Most recently, Our Man is the man behind 2:46, best known by its Twitter hashtag #Quakebook. He has successfully herded the cats together and created a work of art and altruism. Nobody is making a single shekel off this book, except the Red Cross. He won't even release his real name in connection with it, although as an aspiring novelist the publicity would certainly help him. He is not the only person responsible for #Quakebook - many have laboured to edit, assemble, lay out, proof and otherwise process and promote the work gathered from writers - including me - whose brief pieces make up the book, but the whole thing started with Our Man and His Idea.

For services above and beyond the call of duty, for service over self-interest and for holding down the Abiko bureau in time of crisis, the Woodshed salutes Our Man in Abiko and proclaims him our Spiritual Leader of the Moment.

In other breaking news, the aformentioned Quakebook  put together by Our Man and his team, to which I contributed in my small way, is now a bona fide best seller.

I had faith that the Twitter-germinated #Quakebook would do reasonably well, but in its first day of release it has already zoomed to #7 #6 on the Amazon non-fiction charts. I realize that I am merely riding the coattails of the established heavy hitters like William Gibson and Yoko Ono and the authorial young guns like Barry Eisler and Jacob Adelstein, who have already made their best-seller bones, but my name is there in the table of contents and my piece is mentioned in the editorial descriptions for the book listing. 
As of yesterday, the ebook was available for Kindle. You can get free apps for your smartphones and  computers to enable you to read it without laying out for a Kindle Reader. Amazon is donating its services to host and distribute the book on Kindle, so 100% of your money is going to the Red Cross to help people in Japan in the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11.

Go. Buy. Now. Help Japan.



#quakebook featuring Scala & Kolacny Brothers and Kings of Leon from Quakebook on Vimeo.




Update: My Virtually Speaking Sunday:Maple Syrup Edition interview with Our Man in Abiko can be found here.
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Some days at work are more entertaining than others

From the dept. of You Couldn't Make This Up:

Policeman held over theft of schoolgirl's underwear
The Yomiuri Shimbun
KOBE--A policeman was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stealing undergarments from a 14-year-old girl while visiting her house to question her about a crime she had witnessed, police said.
Arrested was Yuki Miyamoto, 26, a policeman from Aboshi Police Station in Hyogo Prefecture.
According to the police, at about 1:50 p.m. Saturday, Miyamoto went to the second-year middle school student's house in Himeji in the prefecture, to question her about a case of public indecency she had witnessed earlier the same day.
Miyamoto is believed to have entered the student's room and stolen about 25 items of underwear.
The student told police that when she was about to take a bath, she noticed her underwear was missing. Her mother reported the theft to the police.
The police questioned Miyamoto about the incident on the same day.
They said Miyamoto has admitted to the allegations.
"It's inexcusable that a uniformed policeman committed a crime during the course of duty," Junichi Wada, head of the Hyogo prefectural police's office of personnel supervision said. "In addition to investigating the facts, we'll deal strictly [with this matter]."
(Oct. 21, 2009)

and I had almost forgotten this one from last month. I was going to post it when it first ran in our paper, but I was uh...holding it, for later use.

33% of men sit to pee: Toto poll
KITAKYUSHU (Kyodo)
About one in three Japanese men tend to sit on the toilet when urinating at home, according to results of a survey by toilet maker Toto Ltd.
The Internet survey conducted in May, covering 500 men in their 20s to 60s whose homes have Western-style toilets, found 33.4 percent said they prefer to sit, citing "ease of posture" and "to make cleaning easier" as the main reasons.
The figure was 9.7 percent higher than in Toto's last survey in 2004.
Takuji Yano of Toto's public relations department said, "It seems that people are tending to be more conscious about the bathrooms in their home, such as equipping washlet attachments to the toilet and trying to keep them cleaner."

I wonder if Pastor Anderson knows about this?

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)

The obligatory Japanese election post

Okay, this post is late and for that I apologize, but I've been busy down at the Ministry of Truth office rewriting the translations of what all the conservative movers and shakers think of the Japanese election. The consesus is that they are against it.

Doom and gloom is widely predicted by the right and less than 24 hours after the centerist Democratic Party of Japan signed a coalition with the leftish Social Democratic Party and the quasi-populist centerist/conservative People's New Party, headlines in the conservative press were announcing that cracks were already appearing in the tripartate alliance.

On the left, there is a bit more diversity of opinion. Some want to know when the bread and circuses will be arriving and others, realizing the economic fix the country is in, are being a bit more pragmatic and scaling back their expectations.

The new cabinet will be sworn in next week, so let's get cracking.

First, you need to know some things:
Japanese political history 101

Japanese media 101

Some decent political blogging on Japanese politics can be found at Tobais Harris' Observing Japan

Why the Liberal Democratic Party lost
As the old saw goes, the Liberal Democratic Party is neither, but that not really relevant here. The party lost the election for a variety of reasons

1. The economy sucks
2. Prime Minister Taro Aso brought a George W. Bush sort of eloquence to public speaking and was widely considered a bit of an embarrassment
3. The economy really sucks
4. People were sick and tired of the LDP after more than 50 years of them running the country. People have been sick and tired of the LDP for many years, but its never made much difference until now. Why? See reasons 1 thru 3.
5. The economy suuuuuuucks
6. The last elected Prime Minister in Japan was the very popular Junichro Koizumi, who was re-elected in a landslide snap election in 2005. Japan has had three unelected prime ministers since then.
7.Could it have been this kind of populist approach?

Education, Science and Technology Minister Ryu Shionoya also figuratively rose from the dead in a proportional representation bloc after losing in his single-seat constituency.
Shionoya said one cause of the LDP's defeat was "the people's lack of understanding of politics."
"I think the details of our policies haven't been conveyed to the public. I wonder how much ordinary citizens understand these things, including law-related points," he said.
"People need to make decisions based not solely on the lure of immediate gains. They need to think about what kind of society to build in the future," he said.
-Sept. 2 Daily Yomiuri

Mind you, that kind of elitism is rampant in Japan, but especially among the upper echelons of the LDP.
Japan is, in some ways still a feudal country at heart. People still go into the family business and follow in dad's footsteps professionally to much larger extent than in the west and parents still run their children's lives to a ripe old age.
And the aristocracy still rules. The vast majority of Diet members are graduates of one of about four elite universities - they go into the executive ranks of corporate Japan or the civil service and come out at age 50 to enter politics. That or they take over the seat from dear old dad, or granddad or uncle. Dynastic politics - children of politicians running for their parents and often grandparents old seat - is very common in Japan at all levels. Most of Taro Aso's Cabinet have a Cabinet Minister in their family tree somewhere and a full third of the LDP's elected Diet members in the last parliament were people who had effectively inherited their seats from family members.

Aso's paternal grandfather was prime minister and so was his father-in-law. His father ran a massive mining and cement company and his sister married into the Imperial family.

But the LDP hasn't cornered the market bluebloods either - the new prime minister Yukio Hatoyama is also a blueblood whose family has been called Japan's answer to the Kennedy clan.

Will the DPJ be any different?

Yes, at first. But while some of the old guard of the DPJ are the more centerist holdovers from the old Japan Socialist Party, a lot more of them are former LDP members or rookies whose main complaint about the old regime, aside from a few foreign and security policy points, is that it has denied them their turn at the trough. Power corrupts and we will eventually see the DPJ members getting their snouts in and the same cycle of corruption repeating.

What cycle is that? Well, the reason the LDP stayed in power for more than 50 years is that they managed to fulfill a vital role in post war Japan. It goes like this: To survive, a political party needs to get votes. To get those votes its needs money to campaign and money to reward areas that support it.

The LDP spent tax money like a drunken sailor on public works projects across the country - something very much needed to rebuild and modernize the nation in the 50s,but by the 70s, the government was building six-lane highways to nowhere, multi-million dollar bridges to tiny islands and spending tons of money on "anti-erosion" work - pouring concrete along the coast.

This brings jobs and money to rural areas and get the party votes. The construction industry in Japan is very much dominated by the Yakuza, so the contract bidding for all these projects were and still are, usually fixed. Companies collude to share the work and keep the price high, it's the Japanese way - the companies make money, the mob makes money and what the taxpayers don't know won't hurt them.

The mobsters then take their cut and launder it by donating it to the ultrarightist organizations they very often control, which in turn donate a slice of the cash to right wing politicians in the LDP and "spends" the rest at mob front businesses . The LDP also gets fat contributions from the construction companies and virtually anyone doing business with the government, which is just about everyone. The longer they stayed in power, the longer the reach of their fundraising tentacles. Whether the DPJ can or will step into the LDP's shoes in this cycle in the long run is an open question - I think they will try, but won't be as successful at it - but in the short run, the machine has been jammed by the change in government.

The LDP also promulgated a policy of agricultural self-sufficiency - the idea that Japan should be growing its own food, no matter the cost. This meant lots and lots of farm subsidies, which meant lots and lots of rural votes. And when you control the drawing of electoral districts, you can make sure that the rural votes you control count more heavily than those cast by big-city liberals and communists. It is reckoned that the vote of a farmer in out of the way Fukushima or Akita carries nearly three times the weight of a vote cast in Tokyo or Osaka, where the constituencies have far more voters.

Globalization of the economy has begun to put paid to that pillar of strength too, as Japan has been forced, grudgingly, to open up its agricultural markets to cheap food from China and the rest of Asia, a trend that will continue. The DPJ is offering a new and possibly more lucrative subsidy system to farmers in an attempt to bleed off some of the LDP's strength and has been somewhat successful, although voters in the countryside are still more likely to back the LDP than those in the city.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

The biggest change promised by the DPJ and the one least likely to be noticed aboard is their promise to move Japan toward "politician-centered government" -- I know anywhere else that would sound a tad redundant and ridiculous, but here's the dirty little secret about Japanese democracy -- its really the bureaucracy that runs the country. For the last 50 years it has been the deputy ministers and and other senior bureaucrats that have made all of the real domestic policy decisions, to the extent the average Japanese probably wouldn't get the joke underlying "Yes, Minister" and would feel that the domineering civil servant played by Nigel Hawthorne is a bit of a pushover if anything. The DPJ has promised to replace a lot of the senior civil servants with elected political appointees. I'm not sure how well this will work out -- there is a lot to be said for having competent professionals running government departments rather than amateurs -- but it is good to see the bureaucracy challenged and the will of the people's elected officials take the precedence over bureaucratic precedent.

The DPJ have also promised to take a new look at Japan's alliance with the US with an eye toward being less subservient - not a task given the nature of the relationship over the last 50 years. This change will probably amount to the Japanese government waiting a decent interval before saying "how high, sir?" when America says "jump"ns on security matters, but even that would be a stunning display of spine. One of the junior coalition partners, the SDP, favors kicking the Yankees out of Okinawa. Luckily, they are already accustomed to disappointment.

Much has also been made about the likelihood of the DPJ bringing Japan closer to China. While this would be a good thing and may happen, I sincerely doubt that they will ever be best pals. Too many Chinese remember or have been taught what Japan did to China in the 30s and 40s and too many Japanese forget or have not been taught the same.

The real change that is liable to come about will be in security policy. The DPJ gives every appearence of taking Article 9 seriously and the SDP definitely does, so the likelihood of things like Japan's ridiculous "participation" in the Iraq occupation being repeated are considerably lower than under the closet militant nationalist in the LDP. I would expect the current mission by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force to refuel other nation's warships in the waters off Pakistan that are supposed to be on some kind of blockade of Afghanistan will not continue past next year.

What does the future hold?

Mostly, financial turmoil for the government as they try to live up to their promises of a generous baby bonus (about $250 a month per kid) amohanng other pledges of government largess for the common citizenry and some serious ructions as they try to wean the construction industry off the government teat u end the collusive practices in bidding on government contracts. I'm not convince either of these coming to pass as I think that over time, the DPJ will come more and more to resemble the LDP of old and get stuck in at the trough. However, if they do manage to face down the bureaucracy and put the decision making power in the hands of elected officials, that will be it enough to earn them at least a second, if not a third term.

The LDP faces an interesting future. No one wants to lead the party right now and given the nature of Japanese consensus-based decision making, I won't be surprised to see a few members, or even entire factions of the party, cross the aisle. The LDP needs a strong leader to keep the various diverse faction united in opposition, but anyone coming forward to lead the y party now is unlikely to be around for the next election in four years, so the list of people willing to be leader of the opposition but never prime minister gets pretty short indeed.

The only caveat to this is the chance (about even odds) that the DPJ melts down on its own due to scandal or simple ineptitude as a party with no governing experience, and is forced to call a quick election. If that happens this year or next, the LDP could slither back into power. If the DPJ get three years at the helm without having to switch leaders more than once, they have a good chance at a second term if the economy revives and the North Koreans don't invade.

If nothing else, the entire exercise has taught the Japanese voter one thing - that they can change the party in power, that democracy does exist here, at least to some extent.

Mocking the bozos

While they supposedly serve as a recruiting ground for the Yakuza, Japanese bike and hot rod gangs - known as bosozoku (speed tribes) - are not particularly daunting to most westerners. For starters, rather than being the huge, hulking, hairy, leather-clad menaces one associates with North American bike gangs, most of bosozuku are under 25, don't need to shave, ride 250 cc motorbikes or (snicker) scooter and weigh about 120 pounds soaking wet with a brick in each pocket. The pathetic bikes they ride generally are modified to be as loud as possible, something you never need to do with a real motorcycle like a Harley or an Indian or even a large engined Yamaha or Kawasaki. They supposedly do some intimidating for the Yakuza and deal at little meth and have been known to gang up in groups of hundreds and take over small villages or resorts for the weekend, but their main form of menace is to get together in groups of about ten to several dozen and ride down the expressway at super-slow speeds, blocking traffic. Obviously, they are lucky not to have met a road-rage afflicted North American driving a Cadillac. Yet.
They often have silly haircuts and wear what look for all the world like embroidered lab coats and seem more interested most of the time with taking pictures of each other trying to look tough or cool than in causing any actual mayhem. The meanest, toughest ones probably end up as low level Yakuza, some probably end up in the militant right-wing black bus brigades the rest probably are doomed to a life of day labor, sho-chu and pachinko. The average westerner in Japan generally reacts to them with veiled amusement or simple irritation, but the Japanese consider them an absolute Menace to Society on par with cancer, AIDS or drunken U.S. servicemen.
It's about time someone taught those scooter-trash punks a lesson! The cops need to crack down on these damned criminal bike gangs once and for all! People are mad as hell and they aren't going to take it any more! It time for action:

Bosozoku bike gangs in Ginowan called names
Takeshi Kawamura and Ryuhei Yoshimura / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
Police and residents in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, have launched a campaign to drive away bosozoku motorcycle and automobile gangs using the epithet "dasaizoku" (uncool gangs) to describe them.
The campaign aims to embarrass bike gang members and encourage them to quit their reckless riding and driving. But will it work?

No. It won't.

This has been another edition of short answers to stupid questions.

Admittedly, Japan has a very different culture and the bosozoku are not exactly the Hell Angels, (they aren't even Hell's Grannies) but unless the goal is to make them laugh too hard to be able to stay on their ridiculous little bikes, this is so not going to work.

Tokyo cops are No. 1!

Talk about taking the piss. I don't think this plan is going to hold water if it is ever challenged on constitutional grounds (not that it ever would be in Japan) but it is certainly going to piss a lot of foreigners off. Apparently, over the last month or two, Tokyo police have taken to stopping people (almost exclusively foreigners) leaving bars in Roppongi and Shibuya, loading them in police vans and taking them down to the police station to provide urine samples for random drug tests.
This follows on the heels of a (admittedly anecdotal but no statistics on these kinds of things are ever likely to be released by the Japanese police) wave of stop-and-search harrassment of foreigners by Tokyo police recently.
Police in Japan have no authority to search a person's belongings without sufficient cause. So, what they naturally do is stop you for walking while being not-Japanese and ask for permission to search your bag and pockets. Refusing to give permission is considered "suspicious behaviour" and thus gives the cops "sufficient cause."
Thankfully, I haven't gone drinking in Roppongi or Shibuya for years.

Not an aircraft carrier

This is the Hyuga, the newest destroyer to be commissioned into Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force. It is not an aircraft carrier.

Just because it is more than 10,000 tons heavier than the destroyer it is replacing and carries almost no guns and is basically a floating flight deck that is 20 m longer than the Italian carrier Garibaldi - and about 20 shorter than the HMS Invicible doesn't make it an aircraft carrier, even if if it could easily handle Harrier jets and other VTOL aircraft. Perish the thought!

Aircraft carriers are offensive weapons of war! Japan would never have one of those - it would be unconstitutional. Japan's constitution forbids the country from having the ability to make war or even have a military - just because it has the seventh largest defense budget in the world, don't think for a second it would violate the US imposed constitution! It doesn't have a military - it has a "self-defense force."

Policy at our newspaper in Tokyo is that we must never call self-defense forces personnel "soldiers" since Japan, as we all know, does not have a military. So clearly the Hyuga cannot be an aircraft carrier. It is merely a very, very large destroyer, I mean, in actual fact it is just the world's largest peace-loving civilian coast guard cutter - hurrah Japan! Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!!!1!

Also, that bird over there swimming around the pond, the quacking one with the green head, broad bill and the webbed feet? That is a special kind of chicken, not a duck.

How bad is the financial crisis?

Bad enough that it appears to have driven the Japanese finance minister to drink.

You thought George W. Bush was an unpopular leader? Meet Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso.

There but for the grace of God go I...

The scene: The moat of the Imperial Palace, Tokyo at 11 A.M. today.

interestingly, the original videos seem to have disappeared but you can still see it on the BBC 

site 

It's not me, but I work a block away and a few more of those 45 degree-85 percent humidity August days and I wouldn't necessarily rule it out for next year.

Update: Now you know (none of) the rest of the story

Plus ca change etc etc

At least I can still count on Japanese politics to be predictable.

Big in Japan

You only think you know how weird it is to be a non-Japanese living in Japan. In fact, you have no idea. I'd nearly forgotten that last weekend was the big celebration of the American Vice President in Kawasaki. I went to this festival about ten years ago, as many new ex-pats do. Weird doesn't begin to describe it.

H/T to the Eternal Gaijin

"We are the weird, so hide your children"



Sometime around here, beers are not enough...

It's been a hard day's night Not everyone enjoyed the band as much as I did

I saw this band at a Xmas party in our Tokyo suburb. It was a spot-on Beatle tribute band made up of four local government employees. They had the whole thing down cold -- the same matching suits, the same instruments, even the same boots as the Beatles. They even managed the same vocal harmonies, no easy feat! I was quite enjoying them until about their fourth or fifth number, the chorus of which went like this: "Rub, rub me do. You know I rub you. I always be two, so pea-e-e-e-e-e-ease, rub me do. "

I couldn't really concentrate too well after that, what with the wine coming out of my nose and my sides aching. It was all I could do not to start requesting Rutles songs.

h/t to Steve Resume

It's Hammer Time

December in Japan means much more than just overpriced kitchy Christmas themes at the hotel dining room, skanky hostesses standing on streetcorners in skimpy Santa dresses and drunken salarymen puking and passing out in the train stations after the end-of-the-year bonus party. December is time to make every Japanese's favorite traditional New Year's treat -- mochi.

First, you need a bunch of old people. This is vital as no one under the age of 60 is likely to have the patience to get up at five in the morning to start cooking 100 kilos of rice over a wood fire. Besides, none of us young whippersnappers know how to do it right.


After the rice is cooked, huge pots of it are tossed into a large wooden mortar and then the squashing commences. This is where us energetic young fellas come in. It takes three men to work the rice with large wooden mallets, typically weighing about three or four kilos. You don't hammer the soft rice, you just sort of knead it down into a sticky mess through direct pressure, occasionally dipping the mallet in water so it doesn't get trapped in the rice blob.
Once the rice is a solid mass, it's Japanese John Henry time! A solid wooden mallet swung with enough force for about ten minutes turns the sticky rice blob into a gooey mass that looks like bread dough that has already risen. And no, I am not trying to hit the nice lady on the head with a mallet. She turns the blob between strokes while I pound it into its component atoms.

My stroke, vigour and my ability not to wallop oba-chan on the hand or noggin, despite the old guys pouring several beers into my before noon early hour, earned me several more beers and shot of sake from the peanut gallerythe respect of the elders in my community
Ta-da, the sticky, gooey mess whose taste means New Year's is just around the corner. Interestingly, a number of old people choke to death on mochi every year at New Year's and the reccommended precaution is to keep your vaccuum cleaner handy. If Grandma starts to choke, jam the hose down her throat and switch on the machine. Happy New Year!

Welcome to friendly Japan you filthy foreigner criminal terrorists

Maybe it's just as well that we aren't going to be spending Christmas in Canada this year. I don' t need to worry about my wife and kids getting tasered in the airport if they get stroppy and I won't have to explain to my children why daddy has to get in a separate line and be photographed and fingerprinted and prove he isn't a terrorist or dealer of fake telephone cards after arriving back home in Japan.

As of yesterday all non-Japanese arriving in Japan must be photographed and fingerprinted. The only exception are those with special permanent resident status (People of Korean descent who were born usually to parents who were born here. Anywhere else they would be citizens, but the Japanese citizenship of Koreans, who were considered part of the empire before 1945, was revoked no matter where they were born and they cannot become citizens) One of my co-workers has lived in Japan since 1968, now everytime he returns from vacation he has to be fingerprinted and photographed.

Are visitors and foreign residents upset? Depends which "newspaper" you read.

Some papers say there was a large protest outside the Justice ministry, information strangely absent from other publications.

The Man
The Economist has an interesting of profile of what I'm up against on a daily basis. I'm not sure how long they will be occupying space upstairs from my office.

"The building boasts canteens, a phalanx of white-coated medical staff, a dormitory and even a proper bathhouse (for men only). The group has its own army of security guards, whose main job seems to be to stop you using the lift reserved for the chairman, 81-year-old Darth Tsuneo Watanabe. His imperious arrival is heralded by bows and salutes.

The main difference between this building and a government ministry, however, is that Mr Watanabe is more powerful than almost any government minister in Japan could ever hope to be. Privately, Yomiuri journalists tell you that they have no choice but to follow the editorial line Mr Watanabe lays down. They are nowhere near as forthcoming to their readers."

Dear Santa...
In a lighter vein, there is the list of the 25 most baffling toys

Human Tetris
This one goes out to Dave from Jim Dandy Goodness, who loves to see the goofy side of Japan

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)