Let's Japan.org Debunking Eikaiwa and Ramblings in Japan

The Japan Times has a mini-retrospective on Nova four years after its collapse, with yours truly given a chance to flog Nova's corpse.

For added measure, there's also a piece on the horrors of working for Gaba.

According to William, his troubles began back home in the States when he was interviewed for a teaching position at Gaba by webcam.

This is for you GEOS fanatics that can't get enough of the defunct school:

A JAPANESE-owned English language school has been ordered to pay one of its managers compensation of €30,000 and to increase her salary in line with that of a male counterpart.

The school, trading as GEOS Ireland, was found to have discriminated against Nerea Medrano on a number of grounds, including gender and family status.

From the Facebook page Please Stop the Sale of Tatsuya Ichihashi's Book comes this:

A few days ago a reader commented on Interac's odd (new?) hiring scheme: Refer a friend to Interac and they'll make a donation of up to 500,000 yen (in your name?) to UNICEF.

Here's the pitch from the Interac newsletter:

Via the forums, a great comic on being an eikaiwa teacher: Little in Japan.

Excellent stuff.

As reported in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and ELT News, Nichii Gakkan, a medical and educational services company, will purchase Gaba's stock and make it a wholly-owned subsidiary:

I had been meaning to write about this earlier, but given the way events are unfolding in the Fukushima nuclear crisis, an article published in May in the Japan Times about an ALT returning to finish his contract isn't so outdated.

On one hand, it's admirable that this guy and the other ALTs decided to stick around and finish their contracts. But on the other hand, I wonder if they are not fools for willfully living so close to a nuclear reactor that has melted down.

The National Museum for Emerging Science and Innovation, known as Miraikan, reopened last Saturday after a three-month closure. Part of the Miraikan's ceiling collapsed during the earthquake.

Some video taken on the seventh floor during the quake.

This clip captures the ceiling collapse.

Over the past 10 years, LJ has gone from being a website that tried to warn others about the pitfalls of working for GEOS, to documenting the criminal activities that are a part of eikaiwa, large and small schools alike.