A Special Message

*for my full blog visit http://adelleM.wordpress.com

This morning I received this message from one of the Japanese staff I used to work with at Nova:

” i must tell bad news to you.

NOVA went bankrupt today.

its only this now to understand.

every staff is confused now.

i tell you immediately if i get some information about your salary.

sorry adelle.
dont dislike Japan.”

At one of my friend’s branches the staff had been spending their day calling students asking them to cancel lessons, because there were no teachers.

But it finally happened. Nova has declared bankruptcy. Late Thursday night the Nova board of directors ousted the president, Sahashi, and then declared bankruptcy on Friday. The company filed for protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law, nearly ¥44 million in debt. Nova’s shares on JASDAQ have been suspended from trading and it will be fully delisted by the end of November. At this point all of the Japanese staff and foreign teachers are missing a paycheck; the staff will surely get unemployment benefits from the Japanese government but it’s unclear if or when teachers will finally get paid. Unfortunately the goverment seems to be emphasizing the inconvenience to students, but this puts teachers in a really tight spot. Nobody has been paid since September 15th! Luckily for British and Australian teachers their governments are getting involved - there’s more information on that in my last Let’s Japan link below.

I’m going to try to get in contact with more of the staff and some of my former students to get a Japanese perspective on this. Until then, here are more sources:

From Let’s Japan
Coup d’Etat: Sahashi Fired
Nova’s X-Day Arrives
Media’s Reaction to Nova’s Bankruptcy

From Ken Worsley at Japan Economy & News, his piece in Metropolis.