20 posts tagged “nova”
SAHASHI GETS 3 1/2-YEAR TERM FOR EMBEZZLEMENT
OSAKA — Former Nova President Nozomu Sahashi was sentenced Wednesday to 3 1/2 years in prison by the Osaka District Court for his role in skimming off employee funds in 2007, just before the foreign language school giant's bankruptcy that October.
Presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi's severe sentence took some in the courtroom by surprise. Prosecutors had sought five years for the former president of what was once the country's largest foreign language school chain and employer of foreign nationals. Sahashi is expected to appeal the sentence.
"While it's undeniable that if Nova couldn't refund canceled student contracts, this would have invited doubts about the firm's trustworthiness. The defendant, as founder of the company, played a central role in this incident . . . ¥320 million is a large amount and, at the moment, it has not been returned," Higuchi said in handing down the sentence.
Sahashi was charged with funneling nearly ¥320 million from employee benefit funds to a bank account belonging to a Nova affiliate in July 2007. He denied embezzling the funds, telling the court he used the money on behalf of his employees.
He tried to portray himself as only one of a group of senior Nova executives responsible for the decision. But the judge said that given the amount of money and his authority, Sahashi bore a heavy responsibility for the crime.
By July 2007, Nova was facing huge losses after being forced to pay refunds to students who had canceled their contracts out of anger over the school's fee payment system. In April 2007, the Supreme Court ruled Nova's cancellation policies were illegal, and that June, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, responding to a flood of complaints, ordered the company to partially suspend its business due to false advertising.
Sahashi said he ordered the money to be diverted to a separate account because Nova was facing a financial crisis as there was not enough cash on hand to pay refunds to students who had canceled their contracts.
In October 2007, Nova filed for bankruptcy with debts of roughly ¥43.9 billion, failing to pay about 2,000 Japanese and 4,000 non-Japanese employees.
Katsuji Yamahara, chairman of the Osaka-based General Union, welcomed the decision, but said the case itself was not the main problem with what happened at Nova.
"Many ex-Nova employees have yet to receive their unpaid wages. We've been working through the Osaka Central Labor Standards Supervision Office to try to get those wages, but it's been slow-going," Yamahara said.
When it shut down, Nova had nearly 42,000 students nationwide and was extremely popular with Japanese students seeking to learn foreign languages. It was also well-known among foreign English-language teachers seeking employment and among its competitors, who feared, hated or respected Nova's scale of operations.
Sahashi himself enjoyed a luxurious office suite, complete with sauna, tea room, widescreen TV and a room with a double-bed.
I got my unpaid wages papers from Nova in the mail today! Happy birthday to me, indeed. I'm owed almost ￥350,000 but the Labour and Welfare Board is only paying 80%. So I'm getting ￥278,00 which isn't anything sneeze at. At today's rates, that's about $2600 CDN. I just need to copy some documents and get that off in the mail tomorrow because who knows how long it will actually take to get the money into my account. It might be another six weeks before that happens. I know I should remit it directly back home and not touch the money, but I will take a chunk of it for traveling. Andrew and I are going to Nagoya in April to visit Yvonne and she suggested that we all take a trip together somewhere. I want to go to Kyoto and Osaka, and Nagoya is half way so what's a little bit further? I don't know if Andy is down for it, since he's going to be paying out big money pretty soon to move into his own place. But we're definitely going to Nagoya.
Ohno Satoshi's Freestyle art exhibition opens today. I'm so excited to go, I just don't know when. It's only from today until the 29th. I am more inclined to go on a weekday after work, since I figure it won't be as busy as the weekend when everyone has the day off. I have this stupid feeling that if I don't go right away, I'm going to miss something. His art book went on sale on the 8th and sold out everywhere immediately. I wonder if they will have copies at the show for sale. Justin said he'd go with me, but his friend from Canada is coming on Saturday for a week and I don't know if she'll want go come or if he'll ditch her cuz he made plans with me first. We could go tomorrow, but I bet he has to work. He hasn't replied to my email so I don't know what's going on with him. Andrew hates art and museums so he won't go with me. I don't have any problems going solo, I might prefer it actually. Then I can take as much time as I want soaking in the genius and nerding out at the gallery.
As hard as I tried to avoid getting sick, it hit me anyway. I have been feeling this cold coming on for about a week and tried to fight it with vitamins and echinecea but it hit me anyway. I was feeling gross Wednesday night: tired, achey, sneezing, felt a running nose coming. And Thursday morning it was a full-blown cold. And yes, I'm sure you're finding this all very exciting. I called in for my first sick day, and hopefully one day off won't dent my record and keep me on probation for another month. It was the first time that I've called Nova and actually had someone who could speak English answer the phone. She was kind of surly though but I guess if you're manning the phones to take all the teachers' sick calls (aka too-hungover-to-come-to-work calls), you would be too. In order to call in and not get dinged with a deduction, it must be before 9am if you start before 1pm, or 11am if you start after. I called at 10 and started at 1, so I was pretty good. I think Alex had to come in and cover my shift. But its not like I was LYING about it, I'm still obviously sick so I have no sympathy for anyone. They should have sympathy for me. I still don't feel 100% but I can teach today. There was no way in hell I was going in with the possibility of getting stuck with Kids lessons yesterday. Over my dead body.
In other news... the Nova Rumor Mill has been churning like no other the last couple weeks. A whole bunch of smaller schools are closing (or being forced to close) and moving to larger branches. Makes sense especially if they are all like Jusco where I go on Sundays - only 1 teacher, and at least 2 of your lessons are free. How can they pay the rent like that? Teachers who are supposed to come aren't, and we don't know if its because they back out last minute or Nova is suddenly telling them they won't have a job when they get here. It is a little concerning, but I'm at the largest branch in my area so I'll be safe from closure. The Abiko school and Melaju Kashiwa (where Nikki works) are closing at the end of the month and 4 teachers from Abiko are coming to Kashiwa. Nik doesn't know where she's going yet, but really wants to come to Kashiwa. I don't know how that's going to work... we have empty classrooms coming out of our ass, but the teachers room is going to be a sardine can with more people. On our busiest day, with 8 teachers, its hard enough to move around as it is. I guess we'll find out next month... I'm not really too worried about my job, I'll wait until they start laying people off. But there will be an issue when I don't get paid. Rumor has it the AT's still haven't been paid. I don't know why, or if its true, but what the hell is going on? Of course we won't get a clear cut answer from anyone, being the peons of the corporation, but it would be nice to get some facts.
But Cerie has been asking me for overtime so it can't be that bad. She is the hardest woman to get a hold of though. I don't know why we can't get their personal numbers so we can reach them directly instead of hunting around Chiba, calling 3 different schools and then not have her return my calls because of miscommunication with J-staff. I hope she got the message from Arno saying I'll do overtime next week (it'll make up for my sick day at least) and faxed a cover form to Kashiwa. Otherwise, I suppose I could get one of the J-staff to hunt her down on the phone for me and leave a message for her to call me back.
Photos from the post-Kids Training drinking party... I mean typhoon.
It's 5:15am and I'm awake. If you were here, you wouldn't be surprised. We're in the middle of the 9th typhoon of the year. I say "middle" not in the sense that "presently, we are experiencing a typhoon" but we might be at the mid-point because the wind has been whipping the trees around and the rain has been coming down in buckets since about 8pm yesterday. If the wind lashing at the building wasn't enough to wake me up, I'm a genius and left our laundry rack out on the balcony which as surely going to be blown away. I went out in the wind and rain to collapse the stupid thing, since its flimsy and made of aluminum. It's taken gentler winds to blow that thing over. Even with clothes on it. I always thing something is going to take flight off our balcony at any moment and it'll be gone forever. The windows are rattling, wind is whistling through the cracks, things are rattling outside on the balcony, who can sleep in this? Nikki is even awake. Although she said she heard some women screaming outside on the street and that's what woke her up. I'm a little groggy from out drinking party last night after Kids Training so I'd really like to get a few more hours sleep, but this storm doesn't look like its stopping or letting up anytime soon.
Nikki and I are going to call in to work (at a more reasonable hour) and ask what we're supposed to do. I'd rather not go out in this, surely the trains aren't running. I'm actually 100% sure they aren't, right now at least, because this is worse than it was last night. Nikki and I got back to Kashiwa at around 11pm last night from Funabashi and found that all the trains had stopped. We attempted to ask some guy standing there reading his comic (and he probably was like, "What the fuck do these crazy white girls want?") but all we could communicate was "電車ダメ？” Densha dame? which roughly translates to "Trains no?" Coincidently, the guy next to him could speak fluent English and started talking to us and telling us the trains were all stopped because of the bad weather. He said we could take a cab, since they wouldn't be running anytime soon. We only live in Abiko, a 5-6 minute ride on the train - only 1 stop, so it wouldn't be that bad. Nikki did it once from a bar in Kashiwa and said it was only 2000Y. This guy lived in Toride (2 more stops on the Rapid train, maybe 20 more minutes on the train) and said he would split a cab with us to Abiko and then continue home. I know that sounds stupid since we don't even know this guy, but he was a student at USC in Communications as well as in Chicago for a bunch of years. He gave us his name card, and then later he asked for my email though I'm not sure what he's going to email me about. He was a really nice guy and helped us out. Although, the cab to Abiko was 2000Y and we each gave him 1000Y so we could have cabbed without him but he was nice so I didn't mind.
Anyway, this weather is ridiculous. I have never seen such a bad storm. I wish I could capture it on film to show you. The sun is coming up (well, its getting brighter at least) so I might be able to in an hour or so. I wonder what it will be like in an hour, it sounds like things are getting worse. This is worse than any of those storms Vancouver had last winter that screw the city because all the trees were destroyed. The tree across the way outside our window is just waaaving in the wind like nothing. The foliage must be more resilient here. That's my conclusion about Japan so far: everything is bigger. The produce (grapes the size of your nose), the beer, the bugs (cicadas the size of your face that chase you), the storms.
Just finished the first part of training. Justin and I taught our back-to-backs today, and they were good. We did have time to "pre-plan" though (in addition to the 10 minute interval between lessons) so we weren't totally freaked out, but the next time we do it it'll be for REAL. Well, I am totally going to go in about an hour early on Friday and pre-do all my lessons for the night. Just so I don't psyche myself out too much. Things went well today, I got a lot of positive feedback from my trainers. They think I'll be just fine... I did lapse into broken English a couple times with my lower level students (ooops) but I think I've got the structure of lessons down. Let's hope at least.
It feels so surreal... I have only been here for 1 week. I arrived at this time, exactly 1 week ago. I don't quite feel as though I've been for "so long" already, but a week has gone by pretty quickly. I've gone through training, I've got a day off before I start "real" work; I've gotten my phone, my bank account and my gaijin card set up, what else is there to be done? I've set up my room, for the most part: it's still a bit disorganized because I don't have places to put all my stuff yet. There's a huge closet but it isn't really that space efficient. I should take a picture of it, it's pretty ridiculous actually. Hannah put her bedding in the closet and took the doors off, but I don't think that approach is for me. I knock my arms against the wall enough as it is without sleeping in a little cubby hole.
As lame as it sounds, the only thing left to do is to make some friends. I think a couple of the guys upstairs work at Kashiwa as well so hopefully we'll get along. I haven't met or seen any white (or foreign) guys around the building so I don't have any idea what they are like. I am a bit hesitant about starting work since about 90% of the people responded with a "Oooh, Kashiwa? Ooh, yea...ouch" kind of reaction when I told them where my home branch was. Apparently there is a bit of running involved since the classrooms and teachers room are on different levels? That was pretty retarded, whoever made that setup but I haven't really heard anything about the staff. I'm a bit... hesitant to work with Hannah since we live together and have barely had an entire conversation this whole week. I don't know what to do... Honestly, I could care less. I'm actually quite happy to be left alone at home but it would nice if she would take some interest in me. Simple questions like, "Are you settling in? Miss home? How's training?" Pretty bland, generic questions. Quinn, one of the guys at Matsudo today said he knew her and that she was cool but I didn't really think it appropriate to disagree with him in front of everyone else. Although Arno (my trainer) had a pretty strong (negative) reaction when I told him I was living with her.
I guess I really won't know what its like until I get there. I'm happy that I don't have to be there early, and I'm only working 4 hours, only 5 lessons. And maybe not even, if I get a free or I'm doing Voice. Arno said I'd be doing it about once a day, but I don't know if they slot the new kid in right off the bat. Won't know until I get there I guess! I've already gotten so much paperwork about changing shifts and covering shifts all over the place. I need to get out my planner and write them all in on the calendar so I don't forget.
I made it to the final stage of training... Yesterday I taught 2 lessons solo which might have been the scariest things in my life! Well, the first went alright... I went SUPER fast through the first half and then was just repeating crap and filling the huge gap at the end. The lady I was teaching, Chizu, is a piano teacher and concert pianist and was super nice. She was a bit embarrassed to be my first lesson and hoped that she did okay. Haha.. I hoped that I was the one who did okay! Arno was sitting in the next room observing me through the whole thing and flashing me notes through the window like, "You're going TOO FAST!" It's easier to tack on an extra minute or 2 of chit-chat here and there than try to fill a void of 7-8 minutes at the end. We were doing "Complaints in Restaurants" as our lesson, and even though I worked at Swiss Chalet (which I totally talked about) I couldn't really think of anything off the fly to say! Justin and I saw her on the way down for our dinner break and she happily waved to me. :) Haha, maybe if I do some cover work or get more training at Matsudo I'll see Chizu again.
The second lesson I taught was with these 2 older folks, a civil servant and an office lady. Eiji, the guy, has been on peacekeeping missions in the Middle East. Fumie was really shy and didn't really volunteer that much information. We were doing "Pros and cons of Industry". It was a bit tough because Fumie doesn't have the same vocabulary as Eiji and she freaked out and just froze up. :S I was like "No! Don't stop talking!" on the inside. Well, my activity bombed so I moved on to a discussion. I told them about the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and how people are either for or against it, and made them have a debate. That part of the lesson actually turned out pretty good. Dave, the assistant trainer, said that I handled Fumie locking up really well. The activity wasn't working, so abandon ship and move on. I could have redone it, but I didn't want to take too much time away from practicing.
So, today we're going to be teaching 4 lessons. 2 back-to-back lessons so we can get a feel for the time interval in between. It's hard cuz we don't know the students so don't know what we're getting ourselves into or how to pick lessons. But, I guess it partly comes down to, "Well, they haven't done this lesson" or "They didn't pass this lesson, so we'll do that one". It gets tougher when you have multiple students so then you have to pick one they all haven't done, or only some of them haven't and the others didn't do well on, or did a long time ago. I think that would take me the whole ten minute break. I think we'll be trained a bit on Voice as well: just a period where student can go and freely discuss a topic with no set lesson.
I woke up a bit early to get some laundry done and hopefully dry before I have to leave for work. I left really early yesterday and sat around Nova for half an hour before we were supposed to be there. And that was even early. 1pm for a 1:20pm start. I didn't even have a book with me! Boring. I should rummage up some breakfast as well. There's no point in going into the kitchen since Hannah and her boyfriend are probably sleeping in there and there isn't any food anyway. I'm almost afraid to sleep in the living room with the aircon... I might not be able to get used to the heat of my room again! Which is actually quite lulling now.
Despite being kept up late into the night by farewell party revelers in my house, I managed to get a half decent nights sleep (except for being woken up at 6am by sun blasting into my room). Had the house to myself for the most part... well, Hannah wasn't awake, or even home for all I knew, so I could take my time in the bathroom etc. That might be a different story tomorrow when we might be leaving the house at similar times, but unlike her I won't be running late. I may have found a suitable substitute for Timmy's here in Japan, a place called Mr. Donut. That by no means means that you don't have to send me coffee in the mail. Please do! The coffee was actually really good and 1 donut lasted me until dinner time at 5pm. Amazing.
Justin ended up coming to Matsudo for training also! He was on the same flight from San Fransisco and comes from Toronto. Turns out that our trainer is from Calgary so it was a full Canuck affair. Arno has been in Japan and with Nova for 6 years so he's pretty knowledgeable and really friendly.
We started off the day with Orientation: introduction to the structure of Nova and administrative junk and procedures with some pretty still British dude. He was a bit boring but we were saved by Arno around 1:20pm and went up to the classroom level to start the day. I'm not really going to go too much into it because it will actually pretty repetitive and boring for you. We spent most of the time going over the exercises and why they are used and how to use them effectively. We spent about half the time in the afternoon practicing a part of a lesson that we were going to teach. Right off the bat, day one! We broke for dinner break at about 5pm, and Justin and I went for sushi at the little sushi place downstairs. It was a tiny hole in the wall with a conveyor belt in the middle with sushi going all around the restaurant. Most Japanese restaurants, or "fast food" places I guess you could call them, have a long counter that wraps around an aisle in the middle where the staff walk and serve the customers. It seats maybe 30 people maximum and its designed so people get in and get out in timely fashion. This place charged Y135 per plate and it was SOO GOOD. My first bite was just... yum. So fresh. This place had the reputation of being cheap, you get what you pay for kind of thing, but it's some of the best stuff I've tasted.
After dinner we did two bits of two lessons, one with 2 students and the other with only 1. The first group I got were 2 ladies and they were pretty fun. I thought I might be making it a bit hard for them and wanted to jump in at one point but I didn't and they made it to the end alright. Of course there was another trainer/instructor with me so if they were really dying because of me, they would have jumped in to the rescue I'm sure. My second lesson was with this 13 year old junior high-school kid who had just moved up a level. He was really shy and mumbled the whole time. It was a lot of repetition and drills, I didn't know if he was even learning anything. Even Arno, who was with me, said it was a difficult lesson. He's just a shy kid and was pretty nervous about his English I'm guessing. He's only 13 too. But I got lots of positive feedback on my part and I handled it pretty well.
Tomorrow we're back at Matsudo for another day of training and I get to teach a whole lesson on my own. I don't know if I'm nervous or excited about it... I'm sure it'll be fine.
I've been emailing friends in Japan who I knew back in Singapore. Kumiko, who I knew in middle school, is in town this weekend before she goes back to Hawaii for another semester. Aya and Yuka, who I've known since elementry and middle school, are taking me out to Asakusa on the 21st. It's a major entertainment district in Tokyo, apparently, and has a big famous Buddhist temple. There will definitely been loads of pictures coming.
I finally got my housing assignment today! I was going to send them a nasty email in the morning if I didn't have something in my inbox since they said "2 weeks prior to departure" blah blah blah... Anyway, I will be living in Abiko-shi, Chiba-ken! (Shi=City, Ken=Prefecture) I'm so excited. I have 1 roommate from the UK and the other room is currently empty so we might be getting another girl later (or maybe not? Who knows!). I'm super excited since its close to Tokyo so I can go see Andrew and other friends with a relative degree of ease. It is in the GTA (Greater Tokyo Area) at least. I guess its like living in Brampton again, in relation to Toronto... Except it'll probably be easier to get to Tokyo than it ever was to get to Toronto.
Some Wikipedia links, just because (and yes, I know that Wikipedia is the paragon of accuracy):
千葉県 Chiba Prefecture
我孫子市 Abiko City
I finally got some boxes and tape and started packing stuff away to send home. I don't think I'll have more than 3 or 4 boxes to send back to Ontario, actually. I haven't even started trying to pack all of my stuff into my suitcase yet... I was thinking of just getting a box and taking that with my suitcase on the plane (azn style) but I have 2 large suitcases... the flowery one I've had for 10 years or more and is definitely ready to hit the bin, so maybe I should just take it and then throw it out when I get to Japan? Or just keep it; it fits inside the other one. UGH what a pain. And stupid people upstairs haven't brought me down a scale, or told me they don't have one, so I can't weigh things. I'm starting to worry I won't have enough room for everything!! Andrew told me to go buy some Space Bags and compress everything down. And they are like 10$ at Zellers? The only problem with that is the closest Zellers I can think of is in Oakridge Mall. Which isn't that close, really.
There are still so many things I need to go through and toss... I haven't even started looking through my toiletries and cosmetics. I am going to pick out the jewelry that I wear the most and take that with me and leave the rest. Do I take some stationary? I guess I can buy pens, etc when I get there. I'll only need 1-2 to get me there. Can't I just pick up and leave with nothing but a carry on? Leave everything where it is for when I come back.
Sigh. Now I'm feeling all depressed and blah. STILL no word from Nova on my housing... I will be leaving in 2 weeks as of tomorrow. My ticket also got charged today, and I have my e-ticket, so I'm really really going. I guess it's too late to back out now...
