Article below.

ICHIHASHI ARRESTED BY POLICE IN OSAKA
Tuesday 10th November, 09:10 PM JST

OSAKA —
Police on Tuesday night arrested the suspect in the 2007 murder of a British woman after fingerprints confirmed he is Tatsuya Ichihashi, a 30-year-old fugitive wanted in the case.

Ichihashi, who had altered his appearance through cosmetic surgery, was taken to Suminoe police station. He is currently only wanted on a technical charge of abandoning the body of language school teacher Lindsay Hawker, who was 22 at the time of her death, at his apartment. Chiba prefectural police said they will upgrade the charge to murder.

Ichihashi was taken into custody on the second floor of Nanko ferry terminal after police received a phone call at 6:44 p.m. from another passenger at the terminal saying that a man resembling Ichihashi was sitting by himself. Two police officers arrived at first and approached Ichihashi who was wearing a gray jacket, black cap and sunglasses. Two other officers arrived shortly after.

Witnesses told NHK that Ichihashi remained calm and could be heard telling the police his name. He had been reportedly waiting to board a ferry for Okinawa after coming from Kobe earlier in the day.

Ichihashi was transported from Shin-Osaka station to Chiba by bullet train later Tuesday night.

NHK also aired comments from Ichihashi’s parents. His father said they were relieved to hear that their son had been taken into custody. They expressed sorrow for the Hawker family and urged their son to explain clearly what he did.

Meanwhile, Hawker’s father Bill told TBS in a telephone interview on Tuesday night that his nightmare is finally over. “I very much look forward to seeing Ichihashi across a courtroom, so I can look him in the face,” Hawker said.

The case has attracted widespread public attention as Ichihashi, who media reports once suggested had killed himself, was found alive and with a new look after undergoing plastic surgery on several occasions.

Ichihashi escaped from police officers when they called at his apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, in March 2007 and then found Hawker’s body inside a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony. The police later distributed fliers and offered a 10 million yen reward for information leading to his whereabouts.

Hawker’s family also visited Japan to ask for help in resolving the case, but no significant progress had been made over the last two and a half years.

The case took a sudden turn when Ichihashi showed up at a clinic in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, in late October for another round of plastic surgery. The police soon released a photograph of his post-surgery face with double-fold eyelids instead of single, a higher nose bridge and thinner lips, and it was widely displayed.

It led to numerous further discoveries about him, including his attempt to receive another plastic surgery operation in Fukuoka Prefecture. He was also found to have lived and worked at a construction company in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, for over a year up until this October.

Gimmie a break! A 3 dead hooker a week habit is expensive.

Sapienoverpass will be spending some time in prison, 3.5 years or so. Hopefully he will use this time to repent of his evil ways and go back to his old name, Monkeybridge. Then the healing can begin.

From the article…

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.

…

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.

1. Cause they want to. Many Japanese people visit English countries, Hawaii is a big vacation spot and so is Austrailia. Some people want to continue learning. Some people want something to do. There are many reasons why they want to, but the important part is that many want to.

2. They have to for school. A certain amount of English is necessary for High School/College entrance exams. Also, many kids go abroad for some of high school or University.

3. They have to for that promotion. Some people need to know English to get a better job or a promotion.

When you put these all together you get a fair assessment of a cross-section of who attends English schools in Japan.

So what do I do in a day? Mostly one of three things:

A normal lesson. A normal lesson is on a certain topic. For lower level students, these lessons are normally about doing a task (ordering food, getting a hotel, directions, etc.). When you get to higher levels the tasks become more general and focus on conversation. A lesson is only 40 minutes, it goes by surprisingly quickly, so you can go from teaching a high level student to a low level student in 10 minutes (break-time). There is a maximum of four people per lesson so it is quite intimate.

A man-to-man lesson. A student can pay a little more money to have a private lesson for forty minutes. That’s the only difference between a man-to-man lesson and a regular lesson.

Voice. The voice room is a larger room that has a whiteboard and many chairs. The purpose of the voice room is to get everyone (1-8 people) talking in English. Most of the time it’s pretty easy, but sometimes it’s like squeezing water from a stone.

So a typical day consists of 7 regular/m2m lessons, a voice, and a lunchbreak. That’s a normal day.

Anyways… I got to the train station early so that I could do a little sightseeing and find exactly where the Nova branch was located. Not only were there two branches in close proximity, but they were not easy to find. It took me a while, but I managed to find out where the branch was; it was in a shopping mall called the Cube (which is not in the shape of a cube).

To make a long story short, training went well, but I’m still not sure why I went to Kyoto for training (they train at Gakuenmae, where I work). I did a lot of training and didn’t have much time for exploring. I will definitely have to go back to Kyoto to see the Nintendo building.

After this post, I’m going to stop posting the day for stuff I did; there’s just no way I’m going to be able to remember which day it was.