Eikaiwa

Nozomu Sahashi, the ousted president of NOVA Corp., was getting into some bunnies a bit different to the stuffed toy symbol of the struggling English conversation school chain, Sunday Mainichi (11/18) says.

Sahashi, 56, had decked out a secret room attached to the President’s Office at NOVA headquarters in Osaka’s Naniwa-ku with a Jacuzzi, sauna and double bed in a room decorated every bit as gaudily as the tackiest of love hotels.

Receiver Toshiaki Higashibatake opened the room to the media to show the world just how much Sahashi was using the publicly traded NOVA as his own personal company, including using the chain to fund the 70 million yen it cost to set up his secret love nest, as well as the 2.7 million yen a month in rent that came with it. NOVA was also forced to foot the bill for a similar love palace for the ex-president in Tokyo, all the while failing to pay thousands of its employees’ wages and rent.

“Former President Sahashi started using this (Osaka) office from about 2002,” a NOVA spokesman tells Sunday Mainichi.

From about the same time, NOVA’s finances began taking a turn for the worse. By its settlement of accounts at the end of March this year, it was 3.1 billion yen in debt. NOVA owes 4 billion yen in unpaid wages and has already received payment from students in the vicinity of 40 billion yen for lessons it has not yet provided. Sahashi, though, has no such money worries. In 2005, he took home an annual salary of 300 million yen. And last year also pocketed a pay packet of 150 million yen.

Sahashi had a liking for bunnies that went beyond the NOVA bunny he created to become the symbol of the company.

“He’d take a gorgeous secretary with him every time he went to some big meeting or party. He used secretaries who had once been top nightclub hostesses in Tokyo’s Ginza and Osaka’s Kita. They were all gorgeous women, every bit as attractive as showbiz idols or models,” a former NOVA executive tells Sunday Mainichi. “He had his favorite foreign teachers and picked out several women for serious relationships; I suppose that’s what he used to use the secret room in the president’s office for.”

In the early days of NOVA, back in the first half of the 1980s, Sahashi was apparently notorious for housing his hostess lovers in dormitories he had set up for foreign teachers at his company’s schools.

“He broke a lot of hearts, of both Japanese and foreign women,” says a resident of the area where Sahashi’s lovers used to be shacked up. “He used to get sick of women pretty quickly and would soon find new love. We were always hearing him screaming out in lover’s tiffs.”

Despite his failings, some within Japan’s McEnglish industry acknowledge Sahashi had his successes.

“He was certainly an ideas man,” an industry insider says. “At a time when the market rate for classes was 10,000 yen a lesson, he was able to provide classes for under 2,000 yen a pop, which really drew in customers. He was also a big supporter of youngsters, having employed lots and lots of very young teachers.”

Sahashi also oversaw NOVA as it grew from being a tiny Osaka conversation school that grew to become a nationwide chain far larger than any of its competitors. The NOVA bunny, in its early days at least, also proved to be a tremendous financial success for the company because of its outstanding merchandising sales, and was another Sahashi creation.

But the Osaka Prefecture native son of school teachers also received plenty of help along the way. One of the prime reasons was indirect government backing through a national program to encourage working people to study.

“This program subsidized 80 percent of the cost for those who decided to attend an English conversation school,” a business journalist tells the respectable weekly. “In effect, this was our tax money. Which means that taxpayers’ hard-earned cash was ending up in Sahashi’s pockets.”

As the NOVA empire crumbled around him and his board let loose with the ax, Sahashi was rumored to have fled overseas to avoid possible prosecution or retribution, but it appears he is actually still in Japan.

“According to a lawyer for the former president, he is spending his time traveling back and forth between Tokyo and Osaka,” a NOVA spokesman tells Sunday Mainichi. “We have still yet to be able to talk directly with him.”

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/culture/waiwai/face/news/20071109p2g00m0dm004000c.html

Failed English-language school chain Nova Corp. held briefings in Tokyo and Osaka on Friday for about 200 of the firm’s management-level employees, detailing the procedures required to gain reemployment with G.education Co.

Interviews for the firm’s employees wishing to work for G.education, based in Nagoya, which will take over Nova’s operation, were also conducted by Nova in Tokyo and Osaka the same day.

Nova will offer further interviews to about 4,900 nonmanagerial employees and foreign teachers on Saturday at about 20 locations.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071110TDY02305.htm

For years Japan has welcomed English teachers such as Kristen Moon with open arms to fill its many language schools but when industry giant Nova collapsed they found themselves on their own.

Critics say the fiasco has exposed the lack of an adequate safety net for foreign workers in Japan, even as the world’s second-largest economy gradually opens its doors to overcome a shrinking workforce and an ageing population.

Moon arrived in Japan little more than six months before the nation’s largest foreign language school filed for bankruptcy protection last month, leaving thousands of foreign teachers without jobs or pay.

Concerned for her welfare, Moon’s students asked her to keep teaching them outside of the school and took her out for dinner and karaoke.

Their generosity almost made up for the problems, she said, while sipping a coffee at a cafe in Ichikawa, on the eastern outskirts of Tokyo.

“I feel my cultural contribution to Japanese society through the teaching of English is valued by individuals, but the government has exploited this need and led to companies earning huge profits,” she said.

Moon, a 23-year-old American, is one of about 4,500 foreign teachers left jobless after the collapse of the language school.

About 2,000 Japanese workers were also left without jobs while an estimated 400,000 students were affected.

Teachers’ hackles were raised further when local media showed the former Nova president’s plush executive suite at the company’s headquarters in Osaka complete with a dining room, bathroom with sauna and Japanese-style tea room.

The teachers, most of whom paid for their flights to Japan themselves and who find themselves without work or health insurance are now desperately trying to find new employment.

Some cannot afford a plane ticket home while others are offering individual lessons.

Despite the hardships, there is some hope for the teachers.

Nova’s lawyers said Tuesday that Japanese firm G.communication, which runs English classes in northern Japan, would start taking over the running of 30 Nova schools and try to manage up to 200, less than one-third of the total.

But, exhausted by anger and disappointment, some teachers are already packing their bags, giving up hope of getting the salaries they are owed.

“Because the company was telling us absolutely nothing, any new information was from the media, or from the union or gossiping amongst ourselves,” said Julie Pidgeon, 26, who plans to go home. “I was just sick of the limbo.”

Michelle Newton-Greene, 31, is also calling it quits.

“I’ve got to take some dignity home with me and start again,” she said.

Nova’s blue-and-yellow signs, which famously advertised an experience akin to “a study trip abroad”, are still dotted around Tokyo, but none of the hundreds of schools are open for lessons.

Teaching English was once a high-paying job in the country, drawing thousands of people from countries such as the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, including many young people looking to spend a few years abroad.

As the Japanese economy stagnated in the 1990s and the yen became weaker, Nova began a more agressive teacher recruitment programme overseas, particularly through universities.

Moon said Japan’s laws need to be changed to make the country more welcoming to foreign workers.

She and her Australian colleagues feel that the collapse of Nova exposed lack of legal and social protection for foreign workers in Japan.

“Not just Nova staff but any foreign worker, whether they are Latin American construction workers or the women who make bento (lunch) boxes… they’ve all been exploited by their company,” Moon said.

“Often because there is a communication barrier and they cannot speak fluent Japanese, when something goes wrong, they are just fired. They don’t know the Japanese laws or the language and they are easily replaced.”

Japan has a tight immigration policy, restricting access to those with Japanese ancestors and skilled workers.

But with the population rapidly ageing and the birthrate dwindling, Japanese companies face a shortage of unskilled workers, which critics say has contributed to the exploitation of illegal foreign workers.

Goro Ono, a professor at Saitama University, said Japan has also been overly generous in granting work visas to Western English speakers and should have established better protection for teachers.

“If Nova had such a high risk of laying off foreigners, the government should have prepared for it with employment insurance,” he said.

“The question is, does Japan really want to host so many immigrants and have them as part of society?” he asked, adding that the answer was “no.”

Ono said teaching English in Japan was a type of immigrant labour. But Moon and her colleagues do not see themselves as the same as other immigrants.

“We can easily go back to our country whenever we choose,” said Moon, while Pidgeon added: “We are privileged. We are here by choice.”

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h25DO_2O_UNwdQdgDz1ayCy2-NxA

Nagoya-based G.communication Group will begin offering lessons at 30 Nova branches from next week, in the first stage of a plan to take over operations at 200 branches of the failed English-language school chain over the coming year, it was learned Wednesday.

G.communication will reopen the schools using the established Nova brand name and also plans to employ administrative staff and foreign teachers formerly employed by Nova.

G.communication, which operates language schools, restaurant chains and other businesses, was selected by preservative administrators of Nova Corp. to act as a sponsor company for operations of the firm.

G.communication’s wholly owned subsidiary, G.education Co., which operates cram schools, will undertake the operation of the former Nova schools.

During an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun in Nagoya, Masaki Inayoshi, 38, chairman and president of G.communication Co., said the firm would offer explanatory briefings and interviews at venues across the nation on Friday and Saturday for former Nova employees and foreign teachers seeking reemployment.

The reopening of 30 schools precedes G.communication’s planned resumption of operations at 200 Nova schools, in stages, over a six-month to one year period.

Inayoshi indicated the firm would employ about 2,000 teachers and about 500 administrative staff under this plan.

The firm will abolish the system under which students paid tuition fees to Nova in advance, introducing instead a system in which students pay fees on a monthly basis.

The 30 schools G.communication has selected to reopen next week are all branches where Nova had offered lessons for both children and adults.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071109TDY02306.htm

Jessica Crichton, 23, and Hilary Keyes, 24, former teachers of failed language school chain Nova Corp., sat on the floor of their shared apartment in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, eating bowls of instant ramen–their first and only meal of the day.

“I can’t tell my mom in Canada about this situation,” Crichton said with tears in her eyes. After all, she came to Japan, she said, because she loves the country and its people.

About 4,000 teachers lost their jobs after Osaka-based Nova filed for court protection from creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law on Oct. 26. The two were told on Oct. 11. to leave the apartment the firm rented for them. They moved to their new place on Oct. 20.

“Many former Nova teachers are being driven out of their apartments and are living in dire conditions,” an official of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo South Chapter said.

Nova teachers usually lived together in groups of two or three in shared apartments rented by the firm. Osaka resident Nik Shepherd, who came to Japan a year and half ago, is one of them. He lived together with two colleagues. Monthly rent of 53,000 yen was withheld from the salary of each. Currently, although the firm has failed to pay the rent, the landlord has been kind enough to allow the tenants to stay in the apartment.

“We’ve stopped eating out. We can cook at home for 200 yen per meal,” 26-year-old Shepherd said. He lives on his meager earnings from private English lessons.

“I was disappointed with [former Nova President Nozomu] Sahashi, but I love Japan,” Crichton said. She said she sometimes gets absorbed reading “Ugetsu Monogatari,” an anthology of 18th century ghost stories that one of her students introduced her to. Shepherd said he was eager to learn more about Japanese culture, such as ukiyo-e woodblock art.

Although the takeover of part of the Nova’s operations by a Nagoya-based firm has been decided, the future still looks cloudy for the former Nova teachers.

===

Students sore over tuition fees

Many Nova students expressed resentment Tuesday upon learning their tuition fees will not likely be returned after G.communication Group, a Nagoya-based language school chain operator, takes over some of the failed language school chain’s branches.

G.communication announced Tuesday it would not assume an obligation to return tuition fees paid by about 300,000 students to Nova.

During a press conference Tuesday night, Nova’s court-appointed administrators Toshiaki Higashibata and Noriaki Takahashi, who are lawyers, announced that G.communication was selected to take over part of Nova’s operations.

“The decision [taken by G.communication] will highly protect employees and students. I had the impression that the company was very generous,” Takahashi said.

G.communication will resume operation of 30 Nova schools at an early date. As for operations at about 640 remaining schools, the administrators are in the process of selecting schools to reopen, but could not say when they would make an announcement on the matter.

Meanwhile, G.communication President Takashi Ono said during the press conference that the school would accept all Nova employees who wish to work.

The company said it plans to do its best to support Nova students.

Tuesday’s announcement on the tuition fees had an impact on Nova’s students.

An 18-year-old college student who went to Nova’s Kichijoji school in Musashino, Tokyo, said she paid 900,000 yen in advance to Nova about two years ago, and that about 200,000 yen remained unused for lessons.

“I wonder whether I can take lessons or not if I pay additional tuition fees. I can’t believe [what] an English language school [says] anymore,” she said.

A 32-year-old female boutique employee said she attended the Meguro school in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, for 12 years. When she heard only 30 schools would be reopened for the time being, she hardened her face and said, “What will happen to the [Meguro] school? If the schools [to be resumed] are located far from my house, it will be hard to continue studying while working.”

A female company employee, 66, who attended the Ochanomizu school in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, said her advance payment of 315,000 yen for lessons remained unused.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071108TDY03303.htm

About 750,000 Japanese paid for evening and weekend language lessons last year, nearly two-thirds of them through Nova.

Teaching English in Japan, a popular first job for western university graduates, has become dicier proposition. Nova, the dominant force in Japan’s $1.2bn-a-year private language-teaching business, has filed for court protection from creditors after scandals and lawsuits drove away tens of thousands of students.

The company, which is Y44bn (?266m) in debt, had closed dozens of its 900 schools and missed salary payments to some 4,000 instructors from the UK, the US, Canada and Australia.

Critics blame an aggressive expansion campaign by Nozomu Sahashi, founder and chief executive, for overstretching Nova’s resources. Mr Sahashi was fired by the board of the publicly listed company.

About 750,000 Japanese paid for evening and weekend language lessons last year, nearly two-thirds of them through Nova. Mr Sahashi founded the company in 1981 after returning from studying in Paris. The chain’s bright blue signs are ubiquitous around urban train stations, which sometimes sport a Nova outlet at more than one exit.

Nova has reported a net loss in each of the past two years and has been struggling under a government ban. The recruiting of new students by Nova was prohibited in response to claims that it had failed to disclose a chronic shortage of lesson spaces. Courts have also ordered Nova to refund millions of yen in pre-paid fees that the company claimed had been forfeited by dropouts.

A court-appointed receiver will assess the company’s assets and seek financial sponsors to help turn the company round. Failing that, the chain could be sold or liquidated.

Paul Dorey, an official at a union that represents some Nova instructors, said: “It’s been a vicious circle for a while. They couldn’t find enough teachers, so students couldn’t book lessons at peak times and would quit.”

He said foreign staff risked losing company-sponsored housing after Nova stopped paying their rent. “Some teachers have already received eviction notices. It’s a total mess.”

Nova and other English schools fill a gap left by Japan’s education system, which does a notoriously poor job of training students to speak the language.

Only nine of 147 countries ranked lower than Japan last year in average scores on the widely used English language proficiency test run by the Educational Testing Service of the US.

http://www.ftd.de/karriere_management/business_english/275232.html

No refunds offered in partial deal

Nova Corp.’s court-appointed administrators plan to sell 30 of the failed language school chain’s 670 branches to G.communication grp. and liquidate the rest, making tuition refunds very unlikely.

Nagoya-based G.communication, which also runs cram schools and restaurants, said the takeover would happen immediately with an eye to resuming lessons and eventually running as many as 200 of the bankrupt Osaka-based chain’s schools. It reportedly plans to accept paid-up Nova students and offer them classes at a discounted price.

“Our company has been unofficially selected to become a sponsor in order to fund Nova’s operations,” G.communication said in a press release late Tuesday without specifying details of the deal, which was announced before it could be approved by the Osaka District Court.

According to the statement, the schools would be taken over by G.communication’s wholly owned subsidiary, G.education Co., which runs 42 English conversation schools under the EC Inc. brand mainly in Hokkaido. It will initially take over 30 of Nova’s schools but reportedly plans to run about 200 Nova branches under their original brand.

Nova’s court-appointed administrators had been under pressure to find a sponsor quickly to assume some of its previously estimated ¥43.9 billion in debt, including¥4 billion in unpaid salaries.

One of the administrators said a deal had to be made quickly because Nova’s corporate value was plummeting. Under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law, revised in 2003, a failed firm can sell its operations on the basis of brief court permission, even if its reconstruction program has not been approved.

As for the at least ¥4 billion in salaries owed to Nova’s 7,000 employees, including some 4,000 foreign teachers, some of whom haven’t been paid since August, Nova has said it will pay part of the money owed by using government money. But how much each teacher will get and when are causes of concern, said Koji Yamahara of the Osaka-based General Union, which represents some Nova workers.

“The unpaid salaries will come from public funds. But there is a maximum payout limit and it will take at least six months for Nova staff to get even a portion of their back wages,” he said. “Many staff members are now hurting financially. They should receive immediate payment of what they are owed.”

The General Union is warning of further trouble and chaos unless the new sponsor quickly clarifies how it will deal with the unpaid wages.

But the decision to offer a discount to Nova’s students instead of refunds was criticized by the union, which said it will pursue the case in court.

“The decision (by G.communication) not to return any money to Nova’s students is cruel,” Yamahara said. “The union will continue negotiations on this matter with the court and the government.”

One of the administrators said the Nova failure is likely to go down as the one that caused the most financial damage to “the largest number of creditors,” in postwar Japan.

G.communication has agreed to allow Nova’s students to buy the same kind of lessons they were taking at Nova for about 25 percent of what they paid there.

Dennis Tesolat, the General Union’s general secretary, said the details about re-employing Nova teachers also needs to be clarified.

“Both G.communication and Nova’s court-appointed lawyers have said that all of those who want to be re-employed will be. But how are they going to ensure this happens and under what conditions will the teachers be employed? This remains unclear,” Tesolat said.

But Jamie Scarrabelotti, who used to work at a Nova multimedia center in Osaka, said most Nova staff he knows were skeptical about the prospects of finding new employment and getting their wages paid. “We’ll try to get our owed wages, but, frankly, I don’t think many Nova teachers expect to get fully reimbursed,” he said.

On Oct. 26, Nova filed for protection from creditors and completely shut down operations, putting nearly 7,000 employees out of work and leaving nearly 300,000 students in limbo.

In Tokyo, Toby Gummer, a Nova teacher who visited a public job security office, said the bankruptcy announcement should have come earlier.

“They knew they didn’t have money several months ago. They should’ve declared bankruptcy then,” said Gummer, an Aussie who taught English for more than three years for Nova in the Akasaka district.

He said many Nova teachers are in financial difficulty and have started thinking about going back to their home country, including himself.

“I think I have to go home next week,” he added.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20071108a1.html

A New Zealander in Japan was forced to dip into his savings and move house after a “tightening up on photocopy paper and lightbulbs” tipped him off that the country’s largest chain of English language schools was in financial trouble.

Cole Cameron, who moved to Japan 18 months ago to work for Nova, said he had to find a new job and was $8000 out of pocket following the collapse of his former employer.

The 23-year-old, originally from Havelock North, is one of about 200 New Zealanders affected by last week’s collapse, with many left stranded and owed money.

Mr Cameron told the Herald from Saitama Prefecture that he had managed thanks to “conservative financial management”, savings and backing from his parents in New Zealand should he need it.

He said the situation at Nova had been noticeably deteriorating for the past five months, since he first noticed tighter measures on stationery.

Employees who had accommodation arranged through Nova started experiencing problems shortly afterwards.

“Rental fees weren’t being paid even though they were deducted from the salaries. Our salary paper said we’d paid the rent but it hadn’t been passed on to the landlord.”

Mr Cameron was in Nova accommodation, but saw a risk and moved into his own accommodation. He said different levels of staff were affected at different times.

“The bulk of the regular instructors were the last to have their contracts breached,” he said.

“It started off with the Japanese staff having their contracts breached in August by failure of payment, then the management, which included foreigners and Japanese, had their contracts breached in September where their salary was two weeks late.

“And then everybody had their contracts breached in October with failure of payment and we haven’t been paid yet.”

But despite being owed $8000, Mr Cameron said he would not let it ruin his stay.

“My personal view is you can’t sit around and cry over spilt milk. You’ve just got to get on with it, and I’ve been fortunate in the sense I took that attitude a long time ago and went and got another job.

“Some people only got that attitude over the weekend and have found there’s nothing there. It’s a difficult situation all round.”

He started a new job teaching English this week, but it’s been tough financially.

“There’s obviously still that gap of two months’ salary [plus owed leave]. I’m getting through, but essentially I need that two months’ salary.”

Mr Cameron, whose last day at Nova was October 25, said it was possible he would get some of his money back because Nova salaries were government insured, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

“This situation highlights the importance of careful planning and risk management for anybody travelling overseas.”

He said one of the most annoying things was the lack of information about what was going on.

“A lot of the Western folk jumped ship the day after we weren’t paid and some of them have just left the country and the company is none the wiser.”

The New Zealand Embassy in Tokyo said it received a steady stream of calls from New Zealanders caught up in the situation, and was offering advice, but not financial assistance.

Last Friday, Nova dismissed co-founder Nozomu Sahashi and filed for protection from creditors with the Osaka District Court. Its debts are estimated to be 43.9 billion yen ($500 million)

The company was founded in 1981 and relentlessly expanded, working towards its goal of 1000 schools nationwide.

Nova had 300,000 students at about 670 schools. It employed about 7000 staff, around 4900 of whom were foreigners.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10474346