If a Nova bell rings, a faerie get a hysterectomy.

I am no longer working in Japan. Yes, I’m in Japan, but I’m not really working right now. You really don’t know the exact details and so I’m going to tell them to you.

It all started on the 15th of September, pay day. The teachers that did other things beside teach (we call them ATs and BTs) didn’t get paid on time. From this point until the end there were constant messages from head office about why people hadn’t been paid; all of these messages were filled with lies. After the first week without pay, the ATs and some BTs started to revolt. Many of them quit without giving 30 days notice, others just stopped coming, and some people kept going to work. After 2 weeks of waiting, they were paid.

At this point, something else had happened that showed how bad the situation actually was; the staff pay day is late in the month and, although the ATs/BTs got paid, the staff pay was also late. I knew it was pretty much game over at this point. At this point, the staff pretty much refused to be anything but overly optimistic. My opinion was, at this time, that even if you put curtains up and try to hide it, the writing is still on the wall.

Time kept creeping closer to the day that would pretty much determine the company’s future, October 15th, but the staff were still not paid and were still coming in. During this interim period, the instructors’ bosses (AAM, there’s one per so many schools) kept resigning. In fact, many higher ups of all varieties kept resigning. In the branches, each instructor has a different opinion like the colors on a battered housewive’s face. Some think there will be redemption in one form or another, others don’t care, some stop coming to work, and some are breaking every company policy they can think of.

We arrive on the 15th, it’s my day off. I go to the bank and check my balance. And with a complete and total lack of astonishment, I find out that I had not been paid, along with everyone else in the company. From this day forward, many teachers just stop coming to work. There are so little higher ups that they put anyone with any little bit of authority in a higher position so that there is at least someone that the instructors can give all of their forms to.

They hoped to be pooped on by the great leader

Around this time I found out some interesting things. No one that was renting to Nova was getting any money nor had they for months; this was nationwide. People were getting kicked out of their company apartments even though the rent payment was coming out of their salary. Every branch was at least 4 months behind on rent payments, if not more. Branches had started closing, not because of teachers, but because the landlord couldn’t take it anymore.

The staff, even though most of them were now gloomy, kept coming in. There were tons of lessons that could not be covered by anyone as there were not enough teachers. The teachers that continued to come in had many reasons: some were leaving soon and were killing time, those in very rural areas didn’t really have any chance at a new job unless they moved or were very good at speaking Japanese, a few kept holding onto the glimmer of hope that the company would, somehow, pull through. For the students, it didn’t matter why they were coming in, just that they were.

Messages from the president of the company kept coming in weekly, each one crazier and more rambling than the last, telling everyone that things will be ok and that all they need to do is ganbatte (頑張って persevere, stand firm, give your best). Very few were eating the shovel loads of bullshit that were falling from the fax. The money never came. The company was forced to close all branches. This, of course, didn’t matter as the branches were all going to close anyways since rent hadn’t been paid in such a long time.

The teachers and staff are in some kind of limbo. This might end soon when/if they declare bankruptcy or go under.

Monsters live behind the curtains

When I took that picture I happened to be there at the right time and heard something interesting, the bell. When the staff closed the branches, never to be opened again, they didn’t turn everything off. If you go to near a branch at the right time you can hear the bell that tells you that class is over.