Nova collapses
The company I've been working for for the past year, and have recently quit, has gone bankrupt. Somewhere they still have my last two paychecks, along with the paychecks of some 4,000 other foreigners. At about ¥250,000 ($2000) per paycheck x 4000 = ¥1 billion.
The Co-founder Hisashi Nozomu has disappeared, his directors have resigned. The company is 44 billion yen in debt (but that's only like forty bucks, so that's not too bad)...
read here
Thriller (voice demo)
posted by Robert Scabbage at
1:02 PM
10 Comments:
holy shit.
well, who didn't see that coming?
start by checking the forest at the base of Fuji, Aokigahara, for the co-founders corpse...although it probably doesn't have the cash on it to pay all those painfully unpaid paychecks.
Who is going to step in now that the giant of "English teaching" has fallen? Berlitz? I don't think so.
This may mark a rapid improvement in Japan's foreign language skills.
That really sucks they led you on for two months -
Maybe somebody should "Teach" them a lesson! Right, am I right??
"That's just my humor..." (Cable Guy; please see it if you haven't ever/recently)
thanks for the sympathy and the jokes, the jokes help me to laugh about this whole thing, when i think 'Oh, I won't be getting the $4000 I worked for and really kind of needed?'
But then I just laugh. Haha, man I laaaaaugh.
I saw it coming but only jumped ship last week. It could be worse, I took my paid vacation days last month and I have two other jobs.
Yesterday I went to a meeting with 1000 or so Nova teachers & staff and some lawyers told us that they were gonna try to find investors or sponsors for the next ten days and ganbaru this company back onto it's feet.
Then if that fails, they will officially declare bankruptcy, and 5000 or so teachers & japanese staff will start filing for employment, and to be reimbursed for our %80 of our unpaid paychecks.
But I'm not planning on that $4000 ever coming. This is all a problem of english becoming too much of a product, cheap & fast & of poor quality. I only joined Nova because they could guarantee me a job in Tokyo. But I'm embarrassed to tell people I work there.
But real in-school ALT programs have also been dilluted and outsourced to companies that do the hiring and firing because the schools don't want to. These companies are also a bit corrput and the teaching has suffered because of it.
Kent is working for the JET program, which is the only direct government program and pays pretty well as far as I know. They help you with rent, and they do what ALT programs originally wanted: to introduce people from other countries to Japanese culture, so that we can beat them at relay races and drinking
Well, I did lose in a drinking contest and I pulled a hammy (Cable Guy again!) in a relay race, so maybe JET should screen their applicants a little better.
Being out in the "everyday Japan" IE not Tokyo, you get to see many other smaller English training companies that are either very similar or very different from Nova. Some of them are actually no different from JET, other than the Government association. We work either on a prefectural (state) or municipal (city) contract. Many private companies get contracts with the city for 1 or 2 junior high schools, and work side by side with municipal JETs (outside of class I mean).
I don't really know what is the best of the best to be honest. JET has plenty of down sides but runs well as a whole. The non-corporate side can hurt you when it comes to employer needs. I know that may sound ass-backwards compaired to Josh's situation, but dont ever try and change jobs on JET or move to another city. That shit does doesn't happen really for obvious Japanese beauricratic purposes.
You got a raw deal Josh, but I wouldn't expect not to see your money. You got a thousand or more angry gaijin (foreigners) not to mention the Japanese people who paid way more than you were going to earn to take 2 years worth of lessons and don't see a minute of class time. These dudes F'd up and the government WILL bail them out, it just always happens here. Gotta save that face...
Yeah, I am hoping the government will bail them out, I just don't know if they can handle all of that paperwork. 4000 foreigners and around 2000 Japanese staff all filing to be reimbursed for 1-3 months of unpaid wages! Who's gonna go through and verify all that??
I'm also unsure about this ten day search for sponsors they're initiating, but if they find an investor that is willing to put air in the gills and tip the sinking ship back on it's starboard side, put a new captain on the quarterdeck, etc. and if that means I get my shillings quicker then chips ahoy! I say.
All ship references aside I believe that you're exactly right Kent that Japan will kick in the fundz and that it is alot about saving face.
Although CEO Nozomu Sahashi, the guy who fled possibly with Nova liquidated asset checks in pocket, doesn't seem to give a shit about saving face.
His face is on vacation, getting a tan maybe in Brazil, where he can bribe the locals not to have him extradited for awhile.
But if you know Sahashi like I do, he doesn't like tropical weather that much, and that guy is a TOTAL SKI MANIAC!
No way he would miss out on ski season in Hakuba this year dude!!!!!!
SEE YOU THERE SAHASHI, OLD SPORT!
awesome. I can only concur that this is a shit situation, but way to go with the funny comments. And, after all, that's what really counts, right?
What the fuck is up with this new ten days thing? A few weeks back I read about some private equity fun (maybe??) injecting a couple hundred million yen into NOVA to keep things going for a bit... what happened with that muhney>>>>>????
Anyway, let's go ski.
That muhney was maybe funny muhney or maybe not. I don't know what happened with that, but considering Nova is 44 billion in debt, then maybe that couple hundred million yen went towards paying for the electric bill to keep the huge Nova sign over Koshu Kaido in Shinjuku eerily lit up bright white even after the 9 story building had been shut down by the owners..
But Sahashi's gotta buy a new pair of Rossignols for this season, and his Oakley frog gogs are a little scratched and out of date.
Those two equity funds were offshore companies that bought up Nova stock for a few million. By 'bought up,' I mean ghost companies that were set up to launder the remaining money to vague unregulated companies on the british virgin islands..
the names of the companies are great though - "rich penninsula trading limited" and "tower sky profits limited"
tower sky profits ltd is a keeper.
so...no money?
you should hit up sahashi on the slopes. challenge him to a crazy race down the mountain or something.
winner take all.
but really, if NOTHING ends up happening to get you and the 4000 others what they're owed can't you file a class action suit or...or...something?
YES! A race down Devil's Backbone!
This comment has been removed by the author.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home