Another bone-headed moment

I did an amazingly stupid thing yesterday. Something that usually only happens in movies - or so I thought.

I was eating dinner at one of my favorite places last night - Ootoya - and after I had finished I started rummaging around in my bag looking for my wallet. Although it's kind of big it often gets concealed underneath a fold or behind a notebook I always carry around. This time it wasn't there. My heart sank. I started having visions of washing dishes in the kitchen, or better yet creating a diversion then making a fast break - maybe to surreptitiously return with the money.

Instead I calmly walked up to the cashier and asked him if he spoke English. He didn't but another staff person did. I tried my best to explain the situation... uh, I need to pay but I left my wallet at home. I live nearby... can I give you something to make sure I'll come back? Then I'll go home and get it. I'll give you my Suica, my phone, my camera, my iPod... She took the Suica (my train pass, with my commuter information printed on it) then asked if I had any i.d. I told her that it was also at home - in my wallet. She looked at my Suica, which has my name on it, then at the other guy, and they both kind of nodded. She said ok, and I was like THANK YOU - I'll be right back. I probably should have thrown in a couple of 'suimasen' but my head was in English mode. Thankfully I was using my bicycle that evening so I rode home, grabbed my wallet and came right back. I gave them money, got my Suica back, and was on my way.

Eeek! Things do not look good

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We received a brief fax from the Nova president (on Friday), basically saying teachers shouldn’t worry and that there would be no delays in next month’s paycheck. I am worried though, because after 9/29 I’ll no longer be employed by Nova and so I’ll no longer be a paycheck priority. As I mentioned in my last post I have friends who left Nova in June whose last paychecks are already 3 months overdue! Unless Nova can scrape the money together to pay them and current teachers, I doubt I’ll be seeing the fruits of my September labor anytime soon.

The Japan Times finally covered the story on Friday; and in addition to Australian news, New Zealand and Cananadian news outlets have picked up this story as well:
The Japan Times
Canadian TV
New Zealand Herald

The End is Nigh?

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Nova is also being reported on in Australian news: the Sydney Morning Herald. It came out today that still some teachers (Assistant Trainers and Block Trainers in Tokyo) will not be paid until Tuesday - 11 days late! Please keep in mind that in Japan we are only paid once a month. Also, a friend of mine who left Nova/Japan in late June said that neither she nor her boyfriend have received their July paychecks yet! My former AT who left Nova in April is convinced that this is the end and that I won’t receive my October paycheck. I sincerely hope I do because Nova will owe me over $2000.

More articles on the topic:
threads from letsjapan.org
article from Japan Economy News & Blog

For the record

I've signed up with a new blog site. One Tokyo can now be accessed at http://adelleM.wordpress.com. I also just started importing my blogspot blogs into my Facebook account. The blogspot site will still function, and I actually plan to post everything here, but it will also be published on wordpress, which is the address I'll mainly use.

Again, This is My Employer

(follow-up to June 16.)
Nova is in trouble. Real trouble. I'm not even angry, I just want to know what's going on. The company itself is not a reliable source of information - you could barely call it a source, but here is some background on the situation, and what is happening now.

Two months ago Nova was forced to partially suspend business for 6 months because of illegal and unfair cancellation policies. I knew this could create financial problems for Nova because the company only makes money when students buy bulk lesson packages. So, a student buys 150-600 points (150-600 lessons) up front and Nova gets money; but they don't make any money off of that student until she buys more points. The bulk of the money Nova makes from month to month is by selling kids lessons, new textbooks, or an assortment of other relatively small purchases. Recently, with the partial ban on new contracts and a flood of cancellations Nova is reporting huge losses. More specifically, "Nova's 2008 first quarter financials showed a loss of 4,300,000,000 Yen, and a %19 decrease in sales compared to the previous year period and overall %19 decrease in reoccuring profit.^[15] Nova cited a decrease in the number of students and deterioration of its image as an explanation." *

What I know has been cobbled together from corroborated rumors I've heard from other teachers, Japanese staff, and information I've found on the internet. I'm only listing the rumors that I think are credible; Nova has not confirmed or denied anything to its teachers so until they do everything is a rumor. So without further ado...

• The August 15th paycheck to instructors was late.
• For two months Japanese staff have been paid late, and they did not receive their usual summer bonuses.
• New instructors are being told that their salary advances will be late.
• Nova is closing a number of branches in Tokyo.
  

(from the internet)

• NOVA has been late in paying its suppliers/business partners
• NOVA fell into arrears for printing costs at the end of July
• NOVA failed to pay an advertising firm on August 10
• Scheduled bank repayments have ceased

As I mentioned before there is no official word from the company to its employees as to what is happening. I did get a chance to speak with a block trainer about a week ago, and he was disappointed that Nova wasn't attempting to communicate with employees he was also confident that the company bwould be able to stay in business. Apparently he spoke to another instructor who, before joining Nova had worked in the financial industry in London, and had somehow gained access to Nova's financial profile and decided that Nova possessed enough assets to be able to stay afloat. I was mildly convinced by that story (which I of course paraphrased), but I've also heard rumors that Nova has few assets.

It also seems as though Japanese staff are getting more information than the foreign staff. Case in point (in addition to the exchange between me and the block trainer) my co-workers recently spoke to a titled instructor at another school who hadn't been notified that her school was closing, yet I've spoken to a number of Japanese staff who could quickly rattle off a list of schools closing by the end of September. Apparently a teacher a school a couple of train stops over quit because Nova wouldn't answer his questions about what is going on.

And then the next step is speculation. Nova is apparently the largest employer of foreign nationals in Japan.* What will happen to the teachers? Of course, some will go home and others will just flood the Japanese market for English teachers; but then again so will the students left adrift if Nova goes under although I wouldn't be surprised of some of them have no desire to learn English after dealing with Nova. I asked one Japanese staff member what will happen to the Japanese staff and she told me that people would "retire."

For more information on the situation check out the following articles/websites:

Nova (English School in Japan) - Wikipedia
Is Nova As Good As Dead? - Japan Economy and News Blog
Toyo Kezei Article: Is Nova Running Out of Money? - Let's Japan.org
What Nova Got Nailed For Part 3 - Let's Japan.org

NYT - "Before Models Can Turn Around, Knockoffs Fly"

"Before Models Can Turn Around, Knockoffs Fly"

This New York Times article is one in a growing chorus of complaints from American designers that lower-end retail stores are copying their clothing. The Council of Fashion Designers of American (CFDA) is lobbying Congress to extend copyright protection to garments and individual designers are sueing stores, such as Forever 21, who they think have copied their clothing too closely.

I think the designers are being a bit ridiculous. I understand their indignance at being copied but do they think they're actually losing money? Do they think that the shopper who spent $25 on a dress at Forever 21 was actually going to buy the designer version for $250? Or $2500? The consumer base doesn't overlap - not even the other way around. A shopper who can and will pay $200 for a shirt doesn't want the cheap, low quality massed produced version for $20.

Now, I realize that the proliferation of knock-offs could potentially reduce the exclusivity factor. A boutique may carry only 5 of an item while Forever 21 carries 5000 so instead of being the only one on your block to have something, everyone on the train has it. I admit, that kind of sucks. But what would the designers have - 1% of the country looking like class and the rest looking like trash?*

If the CFDA and its designers want to recapture the market they will need a new business plan, a plan which a small handful of designers have already adopted: collaboration. Collaboration. Whether with Target, KMart, H&M or whomever, it can give shoppers the access to designers that they ultimately crave while still allowing designers credit for their work and some degree of control over the quantity that they put out in stores.

At this risk of sounding trite, this is the 21st century and the internet has changed the way consumers interact with producers. It changed the music business, and it will change the fashion business regardless of what designers do; however, if designers stopped whining about being copied they could make the internet and mass distribution work to their advantage.


*That line came from what song, by which artist (female group), popular around 1998/2000? Bonus points for album name.

Tokyo Writers' Salon - Meet Joan

From time to time I post stuff that I've written when I go to the (monthly) Tokyo Writers' salon. The group welcomes, works with, and encourages all genres and types of writing, but personally I always choose to do non-fiction. That's what I'm most comfortable with and generally interested in producing. At last weeks' meeting, however, the organizer gave us an exercise wherein we had to create a character. We had to write a character and then we had to do something with it, so here is my attempt at fiction:

Joan, 31
brown eyes
lives alone in a 3 bedroom house
her car is not fuel efficient
she has a boyfriend of 2 years that she's hoping will become a fiancé
she's ok with having kids at a late age, say 37 or 38 cause she believes in medicine
her vacations alternate between visiting family and going somewhere warm
she prefers to relax over sightseeing
she's ok reading books about faraway places and cultures, she doesn't feel the need to go there.

The directions: imagine a coat. Imagine the pocket of the coat. Imagine what's in the pocket. (your character is being followed)

Joan has a nice coat. Stylish but not trendy. Expensive but not flashy. Boring, some might say. Classic, say others. The inside of the coast has a convenient pocket. Joan likes to put relevant pieces of paper there when she's running errands. I'm not sure what is in there right now because Joan is running many errands today. But I do know that Joan is being followed.

She doesn't notice. She's quietly chiding herself for the resurgence of one of her many imperfections. An imprefection that her boyfriend would dismiss, as would and did anybody else who knew her because she was a very capable and accomplished woman. But the imperfections bothered her, and in those moments her slight imperfections dwarfed the world.

Joan was going nowhere special. Nowhere out of the ordinary. She wasn't afraid because she was comfortable living in a city. Completely comfortable - not like those other people who tell their families elsewhere that the city is 'so safe', but then are too scared to ride the bus alone after dark. No, Joan wasn't scared today, but she should have been. And had she known she was being followed she would have been. She wasn't scared of the city or the people in it, but she was scared of one person. If she knew she was being folllowed she would have been scared, but she would also have the plan.

She has a plan. She was given a plan, because she also has secrets.