New colors...

By the way, you might have noticed that the colors of the blog have been changed due to popular request (2 people)... Let me know if there are any other cosmetic changes you think would help the readability of the blog... Thanks...

The big news...

Saw some interesting news as reported on Lets Japan... It looks like (old)NOVA has now officially declared bankruptcy and gone into liquidation...

This is good news for a couple of reasons. Firstly it means that instructors waiting on backpay are one step closer to receiving their rishokuhyo (the official letter of dismissal from the company which is essential to any unpaid wage claim)...

Hopefully it will also be a cue to start criminal proceedings against those responsible for, at the very least, the withheld wages, and probably to a greater extent, criminal negligence... These people have hurt a lot of people along the way and they need to pay for what they did... I hope retribution against the Monkey is swift and hard, as he has made a lot of people, particularly those with families to feed, suffer unnecessarily due to his abysmal economic management...

The procedures for receiving backpay will become clearer soon and the Japan Labour Health and Welfare Organisation website has an explanation of the system of application for backpay... and an explanation of English consultation times, but as can be seen there is no information for next week, so if anyone has any time to get down there by the end of this week (I don't), please head down to Kawasaki and find out what we all have to do... I would really appreciate a comment to help everyone out...

As promised earlier, I have the information on student courses and prices and will put that up in the next couple of days...

Back from my weekend...

Sorry all, I just had my weekend and spent almost every last yen I had at a couple of celebratory functions...

Got into work today, and quite a few of the teachers had the day off, so the Teacher's Room was a bit emptier than it had been... Still there were about 7 or 8 people there... Over the weekend some people had bought some Craft materials and we could get down to the nitty-gritty of making our introductory posters... After preparing the training sessions tomorrow, and in between card games, many of which had unsavory names, but one of which I ended up quite adept at... The Training needed to be scheduled, the instructors are are starting to or are about to go stir crazy ... Two of the instructors got the posters finished to varying degrees of success, mine not so successful... The other one much more so...

Staff confirmed with us today that December 1st would be the first day of lessons, but as the computer systems are still not fully operational the Japanese staff must handwrite all schedules for now... But as bookings only start getting taken from tomorrow, I can't imagine that there will be too many lessons booked on the schedule even though after only one day, they have already opened 3 kids classes...

Also I received an email from my AAM that if any instructors wanted to continue their job at GComm NOVA, they were to wait for a phone call about an info session at Head Office on Wed/Thu and that all instructors that still wanted a job back needed to be available for these sessions on these days... I would, however also recommend that all waiting instructors call their supervisor or even better, their AAM to make sure they are on the list to get called... It sounds like these people will be going in to sign up officially for the new company... But again, please check with your AAM or call Head Office for more information...

The Second day in...

Went in again yesterday of course... The second day of work and there were about 10 instructors there altogether as well as 5 or 6 Japanese staff... Only one of those was the same as the staff that were there the day before... Looks like the staff are going to be shuffled around a lot as they are planning to do with the instructors...

The AAM was in to sign more documents with the 3 new instructors who agreed to come in to the branch starting yesterday... One of those three, though, thought it over a bit and decided that seeing as he was planning to go home at the end of the year, and he had lots of stuff to do, that he would not sign up... So we have 11 instructors in a branch that should hold 5... That's OK... There is absolutely nothing to do anyway...

Again, I met a bunch of students from nearby branches who were overly happy to see us, some even being brought to tears by the sight of their favorite instructors... This is one of the moments that makes me feel pretty happy, particularly after reading people writing that we are all the scum of the earth and hated by all Japanese people... There are at least a few people that don't hate us... The students were given a questionnaire and a pamphlet with the lesson system to fill out and read respectively, and I grabbed a copy of it... Will do a bit of amateur translation of it tomorrow...

Staff and the AAM confirmed that there was no chance of lessons starting until at least December so there are going to be lots and lots of days of doing very little...

The First Day

So I went in to the (new)NOVA branch yesterday... I arrived early and it turns out the NOVA and GComm staff had been there since 10 (all of them were on the late shift...) I am hoping that this was just an opening day anomaly... It would not be fair otherwise...

When I arrived, the AAM was there already and had been since 11... He warmly welcomed me and had me sit down in the VOICE room while we waited for the other instructors... A branch that usually had 5 instructors max had 9 yesterday and will have 12 today as 3 other instructors start up... GComm's goal is to get every single instructor that said they wanted their job back on the books by November 30 at the latest...

When I sat down yesterday, I was handed a piece of paper addressed to NOVA teachers and about NOVA's first day... It thanked all of the instructors for coming in and explained that our shift for the day was from 1PM to 9PM... It explained that our contracts were supposed to be completed before we began working but they have not yet been printed up... The AAM explained that the reason for this is that GComm are trying to print up an individual contract for every single individual instructor with salary details and conditions printed on to it... Not handwritten or printed on a second bit of paper, and not a generic contract for every single instructor... So no contract yet... The guy from GComm who was there promised us that we were all getting paid from yesterday, though...

We then filled in tax forms, banking details forms and we were offered a salary advance of 50000 yen to be taken against our January 5th paychecks... The AAM had applied for and already received this money... The page also asked us that when we were free we should be meeting and greeting students "with a lot of hospitality and a big smile"... So we sat down and chatted with students for about half the day...

The intro form also talked about making a self introduction poster but there were no materials for said poster so we spent the day trying to look busy and rearranging the Teacher's room...

All in all a day of little to do, and we are already getting paid... Oh well, better get ready for work now...

The last night...

Tonight is my last night with no job... My last night of rest... I didn't have enough money for a real Last Supper though... I am starting to love Cup Noodles...

When I got the call from H. he asked me to bring in my bankbook and stuff as well as a ryoshusho (receipt) from the station to get my first day's travel money back... I guess there will be some documents to sign, maybe a contract or some kind of other banking documents etc.

The best thing is that I am getting text messages from my fellow teachers who are ready willing and able to come to work... All of them are, in part, excited about what our future holds and I assume most of them are bored, poor and a few that live alone are a little bit lonely and looking forward to a little human contact... This all adds up t6o a fun day tomorrow of hanging out with teachers and 8 free lessons...

The problem is that my branch staff have not been called yet and as such are all on their way to the Labor Standards Bureau or whatever those people are called to sort out what to to do about past pay...

I am planning to call them tomorrow to get as much informati0n as possible and I will put what I learn up here...

The purple flash came...

It came! At 5:31 PM I got a phone call from a guy who identified himself as H (all names have been changed to protect the innocent/guilty)... He told me that I have a job at a nearby branch about train about 30 minutes away by train so not too bad I guess even though my old branch was only about 10 minutes away. I have to front up there at 1 on Thursday...

H told me to bring my bankbook, passport and any other relevant documents (wonder what that might mean...) to the branch... He has never been there as he worked in a different area originally, but now it looks like he is coming to our areas, if the area system even stays the same...

Anyway, so it's gone from a predicted long period of further repose to one last day off.... That really sucks balls coz I was planning to get so much more nothing done...

Branch Openings (cancelled)...

Today a branch in the local area, in which some of my friends were slated to work, was slated to be opened... As the teachers waited for 1PM to arrive they got a phone call from the bosses explaining that due to "Technical Reasons" (rumor has it this means that no-one could get their hands on the keys...) the opening
would be postponed...

So all the teachers had been sitting around drinking coffee and decided to go and get drunk... And now we are all a little concerned whether any branches in the area will open...

Oh well back to the grind of watching the Movies that I have planned to watch for a long time... SItting next to a phone, watching the little light on the top to see if it flashes purple... If it flashes blue it's just a text message and I don't think GComm will text me with a new job...

Branch Openings...

(new)NOVA has opened some branches as is displayed in this News story put on Youtube a few days ago (November 14, 2007)...


This is the first branch in Nagoya and was an old EC English conversation school... A different company but the original brand of GComm's Eikaiwa schools...

The report also mentioned the impending opening of more branches in Nagoya as well as Tochigi, and Shizuoka... All of them miles from here, so our wait continues...

I am also getting calls and text messages from concerned instructors worrying about when we will open in our
area a lot of angry people... Angry... Like about to kill people angry... I wish someone had some answers... We have rumors about possible branch openings in the area but no concrete news...

Oh well, I have lots of movies, games and other things to do at almost the same rate as the unemployment
benefit so I will get on with that stuff for now... I hope we have some news soon...

The waiting game...

I have come back from the meeting at Head Office and now sit at home waiting for the news... Will it be good or bad? I have signed all the documents, I left the old NOVA and asked GComm to hire me.. They promised they would. There seemed to be a gap in the information. They said that if the company hired us and there was no school to go to in our area, then we would get paid at 100% of our salary... This seemed too good to be true... Well it both is and isn't, it is because we weren't hired yet on that first day... We have to wait for phone calls, so in the meantime, we are being hired by (old)NOVA, so we get paid 60% of our salary for the waiting time... (the government will only backpay us for 80% of this effectively making t 48% we are eligible for...) It isn't too good to be true in that once (old)NOVA declares bankruptcy, we will all automatically be hired by GComm and get paid the waiting time at 100%...

So now, as always recently, its just a matter of time to wait and see when we get the calls, and when (old)NOVA declares bankruptcy so we can try and get backpay...