Let's Japan.org

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Nova aims to create an age in which communication crosses geographical borders, and lines of nationality, race, culture, and language; an age in which people can communicate whenever, wherever, and with whomever they choose.

We all know of the tale of the starry-eyed youngster who tells of his dreams for the future, only to be told that he or she is naive, that his or her dreams are impossible to bring to fruition, that ideals are ideals, and reality another matter altogether. This is one of the things I find most objectionable in life.

If somebody has a goal they would like to achieve, a plan to reach it, and that person executes that plan, there is, in effect, nothing that cannot be achieved. If that goal proves unachievable, it is generally because the plan was not properly carried out, or because the plan had logical flaws in it. Determining a goal to be impossible to reach before one even starts is tantamount to limiting one's own potential.

Ideals are there to be realized: this is one of Nova's most important concepts.

They say you should read the future, but is it really possible to see five and ten years hence? I wonder whether those who tell others to read the future are able to successfully predict as yet unoccurred events themselves. Furthermore, imagining for a moment that we have read the future, what would they have us do now?

There are two ways of looking at the future. One advocates reading the future, embracing it, and letting oneself be swept along with the currents and trends of society. Contrarily, the other involves finding one's ideals, and creating the future in order to realize the achievement of those ideals.
The word "ideal" carries with it a sense of being unattainable. However, ideals become ideals only when there is the possibility for them to be achieved. Thus, while a dream without any sense of how to achieve it is just a fantasy, when a dream is accompanied by a plan, nothing is unattainable.

Everybody starts out wanting to make their dreams come true, to put their skills into practice, and to test the boundaries of their abilities - this is a greater human need, even, than material desires. However, upon reaching adulthood and gaining employment, many people give up on their growth misguidedly. They feel that their company does not deploy them in the most effective way, that their real abilities are not tested, that an environment in which they can use their skills is not established for them, and that they are not assigned work appropriate for their skills.

This is an easy mistake to make, and the consequences can be severe, both for the individual and the company concerned. People must think for themselves: if one's opinions are not accepted, one must reflect on why they were not accepted, and must find the flaws in one's logic. In an organization based on common interests and shared goals, well thought-out plans, whose objectives are acceptable from all standpoints will never be rejected. Clear, inevitable conclusions are reached only after the plan has been exhaustively thought through. With few exceptions, plans into which that much thought has been invested are as good as guaranteed successes, and having invested such effort, and reached that stage, the feeling is one of exhilaration.
Incessantly pushing yourself to the limits of your physical abilities leads to nothing. However, in testing the boundaries of your mental capacity, you sometimes find you can reduce the level of physical strain. After all, how can one become stressed or frustrated if work is both mentally and physically challenging and rewarding? Find your dreams, and, rather than be used by the organization, use the organization to realize your dreams. By challenging the boundaries of your abilities, those boundaries will be expanded, thus expanding your dreams even further, and bringing to them a certain concreteness. At that point, the development of the individual and the organization begins to proceed in unison.

Imagine an enthusiastic employee working under an unenthusiastic boss, or a perpetually positive employee working under a negative boss, or an employee with a vision for the future working under a boss to whom future prospects mean very little. This is a most unhappy scenario, one that we strive hard to avoid. Nova is growing at a very rapid rate, and so employees come to be in supervisory positions at a comparatively early stage.

Becoming a leader of others requires some self-discipline. The leader must be the most enthusiastic, positive, able, and forward-looking member of any team. Looking at it in this way, leadership requires consistent afforts but by keeping self-discipline (or beliefs, if you like) in mind, anyone can rise to a leadership position.

The days, months, and years you spend in the pursuit of excellence is your career. The word "career" does not refer to your age, but rather the manner in which you spent your working time - even if it is just for a few years.
This is the Nova spirit - the vision of yourself in five years time, after having spent that period trying to obtain a positive outlook (the source of the ability to take action), and an open mind (the source of the ability to absorb knowledge).

It goes without saying that team leaders must lead by example. However, the more members of a team a leader is in charge of, the greater the need for that leader to be an effective organizer as well as someone who can test the limits of his or her potential. The ability to spot and develop individual staff members' talents increases in importance.

A supervisor who is able to recognize an employee with talents and abilities that exceed even his or her own is extremely lucky, but the further up the ladder that supervisor rises, so must his or her ability to identify capable people on the rungs below. Similarly, such brilliant employees must have the ability to challenge their superiors where appropriate, and to speak their minds. It is in that kind of environment that a team containing all the wonderful aspects of human nature is born.

A team in which members are unable to engage in open debate out of deference for relationships and people's positions is worthless. The result is great frustration among team members, and poor morale. It is just this kind of bad environment which leads to the collapse of the whole team, prevents individual growth, and hinders the development of the organization as a whole.
When I come across an opinion which I recognize as good, I often play the devil's advocate, engaging the person with that idea in a debate in which I take the opposing stance. After thorough debate, if I have lost, then I know that the idea was, in fact, brilliant. If, on the other hand, there are faults in the idea, they will surface during the debate.

If someone who was not used to such a scene saw me engaged in a heated debate with one of my staff members, they would surely think that we were engaged in a bitter argument. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth - the parties involved in the debate are, in fact, being very open-minded. In all actuality, this is just one form of mental exercise; serious debate is, in fact, very meaningful, and according to the method of debate, the true nature of the point in contention becomes clearer than ever before.

When someone attempts to start a debate with you, don't be alarmed, never shy away from it. Simply pretending to agree with something you actually oppose simply to avoid a debate is generally rather surprising for the other person. Debating is the great leveller: in debates there are no superiors and subordinates, no social or corporate positions to be considered - he who loses does so because his debating skills were inferior to those of the winner.

Only when healthy debate is carried out as a matter of course does a team become healthy as well. This is, and always has been, one of Nova's most enduring concepts.

At present, close to 70% of Nova employees are foreign nationals. With several thousand foreign employees of more nationalities than you can count on both hands, there are naturally just as many sets of sensibilities and cultural values. It is unclear whether there exists in Japan any other such company, and one may even wonder how it is possible to develop a common set of goals and plans in such an environment.

Common sense is simply one's set of assumptions, one's prejudices and fixed ideas, and becoming too caught up in them is dangerous. Only through long hours of debating plans, which have been thought through exhaustively, can one reach the fundamental truth, and any plan based on anything other than this is merely a suggestion and ineffectual. Only by breaking the bonds of norms and prejudices is it possible for imagination to make the great progress it is capable of. Plans that are come from a serious dedication to winning will succeed every time, and the individuals involved with such plans will grow, as will the company.

A company's growth is supported by the growth of its employees, and so it goes that if employees do not grow, their company, which is simply a collection of employees, cannot grow either.

We should all give careful consideration to what we want to achieve out of life, our purpose, and what we are working for. Adult members of society spend more hours working than they spend playing, sleeping, or eating. Unrewarding work is the sign of an uninspiring and unfulfilling life. Someone who is unable to enjoy his or her work shouldn't be working at all.

Each person must establish his or her own values, and must pursue goals based on his or her ideals, because our dreams are waiting for us further down that path. If a company, which is simply an organization made up of people, is unable to allow its employees to create their own unique life stances and to talk about their dreams, then those employees will never be able to become fully involved in that company.

There have been more than a few people who have derided Nova, whose average staff age is 27, as a group of amateurs. We certainly recognize that our staff may come across as youthful, and perhaps even inexperienced. Even the older members give the impression of being younger than they actually are. What is it about them that makes them so youthful?

A group of "amateurs", not long out of school has an awesome amount of power at its command. Such people are incredibly positive and incessantly bright (which may be a shock for the negative, incessant complainers in the workforce).

New posts are created all the time, so the idea of self-protection does not really exist at Nova. In any case, an amateur is just a professional in training, so as long as he or she is headed in the right direction, that person can call upon a fantastic amount of energy.

All workers inevitably discover some task or post that they would like to take over, but are unable to do so because there is no one to take over from them in their current position. This demand for replacement staff leads to constant competition among leaders to secure employee numbers. It has been a precept at Nova since the company's inception that leaders should coax and encourage their staff to take on supervisory roles themselves.
If you have a strong will to progress and improve, if you have a strong wish to make something of yourself and and avoid life's petty distractions, all you need to do is speak in a positive manner. There are some people who, although they may want to climb rapidly up the proverbial ladder, are completely negative in speech. These people are, in effect, throwing away any possibility of their own growth, in spite of their desire to succeed. If, as these people tend to do, somebody says to you a few times a day that you're looking tired, even though you may not be feeling tired at all, or that you are working too hard and it is beginning to show in your face, even though you are at the top of your form, then you may actually start to feel tired or wish that this busybody would mind his or her own business.

I assume that these people speak in this manner regularly, and almost as a substitute for saying "hello", out of some sort of wish to gain sympathy and popularity by showing concern, but it can be rather trying for the person on the receiving end. If the person speaking actually felt anything for the person he or she was talking to, the conversation would be more along the lines of, "Hey, you're looking on top of the world. Did something good happen?" That way, the other person may actually feel better. However for some reason, a large portion of society actually likes to greet people and speak to them in a negative way, and many people, perhaps because they feel they have to, actually sympathize with this. However, thinking about it, such people have done nothing but get caught up in this negative way of thinking. How incredibly stupid that is: I'd say neither person is leading much of a life.

Talking negatively not only advertises the fact that the person talking has not established his or her own outlook on life or principles, but the person being spoken to is also highly susceptible to being dragged down by this negativity, and often finds himself or herself acting and speaking in a negative manner without realizing it. What an appalling situation.

Only by being firmly aware of the inportance of speaking positively do we open up new possibilities for the future.

"Be positive" is not only the source of the ability to take action, it is also a principle that will enable you to be the best that you can be.

Needless to say, as long as a business wants to stay in business, it must be profitable, but the generation of profit is not the only objective for a company. Businesses must use their profits to invest in improving quality and expanding their activities. Also, the more people there are involved in a company, the more the company must pursue its vision, and strive to realize its dreams and ideals.

Only when a company makes clear its pursuit of ideals can all people involved with the business be happy. This is the mission and ideal of companies in society, and any company that loses sight of the future and begins to think only of maintaining the status quo... well, that company is as good as finished.

The Nova Group was founded on the concept of the Intercultural Network. Therein, we aim to become a global institution through which people of the world can learn about the cultures of the world, rising above their national and racial differences, and come to understand each other's languages and cultural backgrounds. People from all around the world gather at Nova, and communicate. Through Nova, they are able to come into contact with many other cultures, and, having equipped themselves with a high level of cross-cultural education and understanding, are active in many fields throughout the world. We at Nova feel it is our mission to produce people who are able to ovecome the restraints of nationality and race, and comprehend other cultures and languages.

The Nova infrastructure, developed through our business activities over the years since the company's inception, is taking shape as a valuable business resource that will play a major role in our future business activities. This can be seen in the form of three networks:

The Nova branch network, comprising over 640 branches nationwide, all conveniently located in front of railway stations, and providing a nationwide environment through which people can experience authentic intercultural communication without having to leave Japan.

The Nova global human network, an intercultural communication-oriented information network, spanning the world.

The broadband network, a next-generation infrastructure geared towards the ever-approaching telecommunication society, and harboring the potential to provide any service that people may ever need.

Harnessing and utilizing the total power that these three networks contain, the Nova Group aims to further strengthen its existing business activities, and, in addition to these, develop new business projects in the future as well.

They had special forms if you were going to go on holiday with a same sex partner? How very forward thinking. Shame they didn't last.

Do you mean you worked for Nova for 20 years and G. Com for 6 months? Nova started around 1981, I believe, which would mean they were in business for about 36? years.

You use many words rather loosely – for example “profession” – being essentially a “voice model” in Japan, with no formal training or qualifications specific to teaching language, as a second or foreign language, is not a profession. It is a fill in job at best, so you can eat and drink, while you take a look at Japan, and hopefully have fun, given the abundant mental freedom and time your silly “job” affords you, relative to any Japanese person handing you their coin.

What motivation is there, other than being a kind person, to be the most professional/dedicated teacher you can be?

For starters, you are not a teacher – you are a display item with a well defined and highly limited role – at the best, a model to practice with, and that’s about it. That’s not say you can’t do you bit, or try your best – but you are kidding yourself, if you afford yourself the title of “teacher”, or believe you truly are some kind of “sensei”.

And then there are the working conditions imposed by eikaiwa – most of them don’t even meet the basic requirements as stipulated by Japanese Law. You are just another foreign tit, to be milked hard and fast, until you wake up, realise Japan is not as intriguing as it first appears, realise you have been getting screwed, and go home, with your udder completely drained and empty.

You only took the time to write your rosy but rather plastic pumped piece of positive loveliness, because you know deep down something ain’t quite right. If all was 7.00 o’clock and all was well, you would not have to pump yourself at all, by taking the time to write such corny crap.

Japan is interesting to take a look at. You can have an intriguing time. But at the end of it all, it is a racist, inwardly looking, cowardice place, full or fears and phobias, all blended with a good dose of divine arrogance.

Enjoy living in the fantasy that you are actually part of the Japanese fabric (if you really study the Japanese, who would want to be – you are actually lucky, you are not), and that you are not just another foreigner, but rather, are their special foreign friend.

Enjoy your lessons.