For us though it is an extension of New Years, and this weekend we are back up at Mt. Fuji, enjoying some relaxing time with friends. They built a sauna, Finnish style, and yesterday we tried it out. It was my first time to go to a sauna, and quite a surprise it was too. Water is poured on hot coals and the steam sure raises sweat! I think I prefer going to the hot springs though – it was a little painful in the sauna.

I haven’t posted here for a while. We have had some problems with our internet connection. Our building is being changed over to cable and our ISP thought the implementation was complete so they switched our account over, however NTT hadn’t finished installing the system – so no internet! It seems to be sorted out and hopefully we will have cable soon.

Back teaching at the moment too, Monday to Friday with early morning starts, finishing late in the evening. I am quite enjoying it, although it does lack a bit of challenge because I have been teaching for so long. I have contracts through to the end of the financial year, after that maybe a change is in order. Other than that, I am working on a couple of websites which is something I really enjoy. Will post some more about them when they are up.

Lets enjoy 2008 – the year of the mouse! 今年も宜しくお願いいたします！

That is the view from our apartment. Very William Gibson. Very Tokyo. The road is the Capital Expressway, and the flow of traffic here never ceases to amaze me.

It has been a busy week. I spent the last couple of days up the coast teaching at a Junior High School, doing a seminar on New Zealand culture. It went well, and was a productive experience. It must be 6 years since I taught kids of that age, so it brought back some pleasant memories of Akita. One of the highlights for me was making poi’s with the kids, and then taking them all outside to poi on the lawn to the succulent sounds of Rhombus.

Rhombus are playing in Roppongi again on the 18th which promises to be a really rocking evening. Choice!

Here is what they posted on facebook:

EF English First would like to offer free flights and relocation assistance to all former NOVA teachers who are qualified to work in China for a year.

You can check out applications at the English First website here: English First Registrations

I looked into working for them a couple of years ago before we went to China. From my understanding there is a little more flexibility within their system than Nova has. They have branches throughout China, including even Urumiqi in Xinjiang. There a lots of other options besides English First, but I think it is very good that company to extend a helping hand at this time. In the end I went with a much smaller school: Circle English in Korla as I preferred what the owner had to say during the hiring process (hiring being a two process after all). I am very glad I went with Circle English as it was a fascinating experience.

Of course you wont earn anywhere near as much in China as in Japan, however cost of living is much much lower so the effective standard of living is much better. Imagine if you were earning 3 times the average salaryman wage here in Japan!

UPDATE (29/10): English First have a posting on the Tokyo section of Craigslist with more detailed information about what they have to offer: Interesting Job Opportunities for Nova Instructors from English First on Craigslist Tokyo.

The first story, Cash-strapped NOVA fails to honor contracts to public schools after teacher exodus, reveals how Nova has been unable to meet its’ contractual obligations to the Osaka Board of Education.

The Japanese Ministry of Education initially worked with CLAIR (the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations) to set up the JET Programme which gave a great number of boards of education throughout Japan the opportunity to hire foreign assistant language teachers (ALT’s) for their students.

At the beginning of the program, these instructors were often the first westerners to live in the town or village and the program provided many Japanese people with the chance to speak with a foreigner for the first time.

Generally the program was a success, and it is still in action today, however “market forces” in recent times have meant that a reasonable number of boards of education have outsourced the hiring of ALT’s to third parties at a lower cost. In most cases this is without problem, however there have been cases of unscrupulous companies and questionable business practices leaving the students in the lurch.

Cash-strapped NOVA fails to honor contracts to public schools after teacher exodus

OSAKA — Scandal-hit major English school operator NOVA failed to dispatch English teachers to local public schools after many teachers quit or took leave because they didn’t get paid, officials said.

By Monday, NOVA had cancelled its planned dispatch of English teachers to five municipal elementary schools and five municipal junior high schools at least once.

The education board is now considering canceling its contract with NOVA.

You can read the rest of the story here (Mainichi).

The second story is more straight-forward with 4 of Nova’s senior executives walking the plank after being unable to reach Nova President Sahashi (å…ƒSaruhashi):

Labor body hopes to grill Nova chief on pay missteps

OSAKA (Kyodo) An Osaka labor standards watchdog wants to question the president of scandal-hit English-language school chain Nova Corp. over delayed wage payments, but meanwhile four executives of the firm have resigned because they can’t get ahold of their boss, Nova said Wednesday.

The Osaka Central Labor Standards Supervision Office has quizzed foreign teachers and other Nova employees about the delays, and wants to hear from President Nozomu Sahashi, suspecting a violation of the Labor Standards Law.

A union representing Nova’s foreign teachers said the firm has failed to pay wages to some 2,000 Japanese employees since July and to about 4,000 foreign teachers since September, and wages that were supposed to have been paid on Oct. 15 are on indefinite hold.

You can read the rest of the story here (Japantimes).

One hopes for the sake of both the students and the staff that this matter is cleaned up in the not too distant future.

Hit by scandals repeatedly, Nova has recently been punished by the Ministry of Trade, Economy and Industry and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for dubious business practices which involved misleading advertising and unfair treatment of their customers.

In a Mainichi article today they are criticized for this, as well as for the way that instead of focusing on improving the English ability of their customers (which surely should be their core business goal) they have focused on expansion at the expense of all else, with understandable resulting cash flow problems. The article – Business pundit: ‘Blame it on the boss of NOVA’ is well worth a read.

Questioning why Japanese people seem unable to learn English, and why companies such as Nova fail to deliver in most cases is something I feel that
MEXT : The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology needs to seriously investigate.

Of course most Japanese people willl continue their love affair with Nova: the rabbit is just too cute not too!

(Nova Usagi picture is from this site: Grassroot Design which has a useful Nova FAQ page).

Business pundit: ‘Blame it on the boss of NOVA’

Sapio (7/21)

The NOVA chain of conversation schools — whose slogan is “ekimae ryugaku” (study abroad in front of the train station) — operates roughly half the English conversation schools in Japan. Earlier this year, in response to a stream of bitter customer complaints, the Ministry of Trade, Economy and Industry and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government investigated the company and confirmed that some of NOVA’s 800 schools had indeed engaged in a number of dubious practices, such as refusing to refund tuition fees to students canceling lessons.

As a result, on June 13 the chain was ordered to partially suspend business for six months — a draconian penalty by Japanese standards, and one that threatens the company’s very existence.

Writing in Sapio (7/25), a biweekly self-described “international intelligence magazine,” business pundit Ken’ichi Ohmae asks why these problems occurred. And more to the point, he ponders, with so many Japanese enrolled in conversation schools, why does the nation’s level of spoken English remain so poor?

For a time NOVA grew, and founder and CEO Nozomu Saruhashi was praised as a dynamic and charismatic businessman. But like so many success stories these days, Ohmae notes, it was an illusion, analogous to the tale of the emperor’s new clothes. NOVA began running out of steam and has finished in the red for the last two fiscal years.

How did this mess come about? The first problem, Ohmae points out, is inherent in the English-teaching trade itself. For the past decade, while demand for English has been booming in other countries, from South Korea and China to Germany and France, the Japanese have been spinning their wheels. Japan’s average TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) score results are the lowest among all advanced economies, around the level of North Korea.

This situation, Ohmae writes, has fostered a “loser mentality,” where learners feel that there is no benefit to continuing their studies. Of course the conversation schools are not entirely to blame: It’s students’ lack of persistence, which leads to their piecemeal, on-again, off-again approach, that stands in the way of language mastery.

A second problem relates to NOVA’s management. In recent years, the media has loved to lavish attention on flamboyant, high-profile entrepreneurs. These so-called “shogun-sama” businessmen typically set unreasonably high objectives for their companies, and while achieving initial rapid growth, they often begin to overlook the key source of their success — which, in the case of English schools, are the students who constitute the source of revenues.

NOVA’s high growth trajectory was achieved on the basis of aggressive marketing, such as its management’s boast that it would “open 1,000 schools,” — when what it should really have been doing was vowing to raise the level of its students’ English ability.

Of course, Ohmae points out, problems are by no means confined to conversation schools, but are rampant throughout the Japanese business world.

A common factor in recent scandals involving the Goodwill Group (C0MSN nursing homes), Katoyoshi (frozen foods), Reins International (food retailing) and others, says Ohmae, is the presence of charismatic and energetic founders who, at some point in their companies’ meteoric growth lost sight of their customer base and forged ahead with their eyes focused only on the bottom line. Because of the personalized, do-it-alone style of top-down management, such companies typically fail to benefit from frank advice offered by directors or advisors from outside the organization. And if the regular directors fail to speak out at policy meetings, then no devil’s advocate is in a position to restrain the cocky leader’s impulses.

Ultimately, the main cause of NOVA’s problems can be attributed to slumping demand at English conversation schools. To some degree, the media has reported that English-related business has become saturated and that schools have become overly aggressive in soliciting students, but this doesn’t reflect the actual situation. The prolonged decline of conversation schools can be laid at the door of their failure to show concrete results: I.e. the ability of their students to speak the language hasn’t improved.

Despite the expanding status of English as the de facto standard for international business communications — as evidenced by the learning boom it enjoys in many other countries at present — it strikes Ohmae as exceedingly strange for demand to be on the decline only in Japan.

“I get the impression that over the past 10 years or so, Japanese have become resigned that their English won’t get any better, and that their desire to master the language is presently on the decline. If that’s the case, then it’s natural that a company like NOVA, which is going against the prevailing trends by attempting to expand, would become so bent out of shape.

“That said,” Ohmae concludes in Sapio, “The apparent decline in the desire for self improvement may spell even bigger problems for Japanese.” (By Masuo Kamiyama, People’s Pick contributor)

July 21, 2007

Here is the post: Fired on my second lesson of teaching English.

Update (30/01/2007) Part two has been posted - Applying to 115 companies to try to get a job.

Just as amusing and interesting. The show rolls on!

So I put in small furry mouse catcher as a kind of test. And look at the results – pretty cool eh!

A search for “New Zealand flower arrangement” came up with Mike Moore which was amusing. A more normal search for “Japanese flower arrangement” gave us ikebana – the correct result.

The reverse dictionary site is at onlook.com. Perfect if you just can’t remember “that” word. And we all know how often that happens.

Good too if you are learning English and want to increase your word power.