Let's Japan.org

Today was a bad day for Nova. They've all been bad of late, but this one has a particularly disgusting odor. Everything that could go wrong for Nova has.

1. The Shinjuku honko in Tokyo, right outside the busiest train station in the world has shut its doors.

2. The General Union went on strike today. For one day it seems. Is that right? They should be striking until their demands are met.

Well, if anyone has a contract horror story, tell me if mine doesn't stand next to the worst of the worst. I swear, I have never had any feelings of wanting to cause bodily injury to anyone, but after being put through the shit that my boss put me through, I was ready to put a weapon of mass destruction up this guys @ hole and have a whole slew of weapon inspectors follow. Even to this day, I think I would gladly give up a months salary for one shot at him "wanna know why"read on.

I remember that before coming to Japan I researched the eikaiwa thing in depth. I visited all of the discussion boards and Web sites and became a pro-active member in the mass of verbal diarrhoea that is CyberSpace. And what I saw was a bunch of sissy-boy fuckers who couldn't cut it on their own and needed their mothers to administer a bit of hand action occasionally for them to get through life. I thought that the horror stories and propaganda were a big joke. How pathetic can grown people be?

So I'm riding my bike home from the station one cold evening when I see that Gyoza Man has his vendor set up outside the local supermarket. Known this guy for five years now and it seems he must be following me, since he operated down the street from my X______ apartment and now down the street from our house in I_______. I stop to talk to him and he asks where I'm working. When I tell him, he says, "You work there?

Whereas the former two volumes were writ and sent as a means of expulsion (if not outright exorcism) of the Ugly Spirit, I sit now at my desk a the homestead with all this behind me, a wiser and saner idiot-madman. I promise that there will be enough savagery, gentle reader, to sustain you. And the Hungarian Hottie. And a great one about the Tandai's former president's TRAGIC fall from grace. Note: as the situation at the tandai has imploded, what follows below is a carelessly pieced together collection of fragments written to myself, No-gnads, or cuts from personal e-mails.

The next day, on the 24th I arrived early as usual, but in a pretty foul mood. My vacation officially was to begin on the twenty-fourth, but I had earlier agreed to come in anyway during that morning to be the token whitey in their promotional video as an act of good faith and since I had nothing particular to do that day and since not coming in would look pretty ungracious; also I had yet to turn in the last drafts of the translations for the school's lame-ass pamphlet. Now, I was there to settle this shit. I had listened to "Dr.

ONE MONTH LATER. The preceding morning in fact I had lost my mind, after two months of being systematically terrorized by my new host institution. I work in four different places, one supervisor sending me one place, another not getting the message, despite my specifically asking him/her to be notified, and then the Big Cheese (Riji-cho) gets wind of it. The details are superfluous.

PRELUDE to MY GULAG

During a typical day at GEOS we would have 7-9 classes of varying length and level. We were also expected to interview prospective students whenever one walked through the door. The manager would usually coral the victim into the interview booth- called the fleecing chamber by the foreign staff- and give them the whole spiel.

One day the manager came up to me and asked me to do an interview. "No problem."

After I had been working at Gregg for a few weeks, it was decided that my only adult conversation class at the Jiyugaoka school would be observed. I don't think any teacher will tell you that this is a fun thing. This particular class was a joy to teach. The students were very high level and very motivated. They told me, all of them, that they did not enjoy using the textbook or the teaching methodology. They said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "We enjoy conversation in English. We come to this school once a week for conversation."

During my initial hiring process in Canada before joining Geos and coming to Japan, one of the interviewers asked me what I wanted to do in Japan. I answered honestly, "I want to learn about Japan. I'd like to learn the language but also other things, like the literature as well."

"Well, that might be OK sometimes, but please remember your priority is to teach English."

"Oh, yeah, of course. What I meant was in my free time and on weekends and whatnot. Of course in class it has to be me teaching them." "That might be OK, sometimes..." Yumiko said and we left it at that.

When I first came to Japan, I had to stay in a hotel because the teacher I was replacing hadn't yet moved on. After a week, it was finally time to move into my digs.

Some of my co-workers offered to help me move in. On our way to the apartment, someone said that Dan (the previous teacher) had a big goodbye party at the apartment the night before. At the mention of the party, people smiled quietly to themselves.

Background: One of my ex-students quit GEOS over a year ago and is still trying to get a refund on her unused group lessons. One night she called with the intention of leaning on the manager for a concrete answer but got Kaya, the senior teacher at the Odawara school. When my student asked for the manager, Kaya quipped that there wasn't one and that she was essentially running the school until GEOS could bring in a "permanent" manager.

Long cheap travel, humiliation and bloody mattresses; I've reached the zenith of education! Got Napster? Then "I'm Your Late Night Evening Prostitute" by Tom Waits goes well here.

The job of the Japanese staff at NOVA is to sell. We are under enough pressure as it is from our bosses to meet sales targets. One reason why the turnover in staff is so high is probably because of the stress we get. It comes from all sides-our bosses, the foreign teachers and from the students. We are helplessly stuck in the middle.

TOZA used to be a mid-sized eikaiwa until it went bankrupt in 1998. The TOZA situation built up slowly over a period of a few months. I didn't know it at the time, but all of the teachers at TOZA hadn't been paid their complete salaries in 4 months. They had received 20%, 30% depending on how bad their situation was; usually just enough to pay the rent at the gaijin house. They hired me in February of 1998 and nobody told me that they hadn't been paid since Christmas. I was surprised that nobody told me. Their response was," If we told you, would you have worked here?"

Background: We were initially surprised to find an email from GEOS. The subject line didn't bode well, either. However, as you read, you'll see that the missive is in our favor. We appreciate the note and revel even more in the notion that people are coming to our site for information.

Subject: A word to the wise
Date: Wednesday, 14 February 2001 19:25:15 +0900

I had to get a day off, which is not the easiest thing to do at Nova, with one week's notice. Of course I could have just called in and said 'not today I have suddenly found a great drinking buddy on the train last night so I won't be up to 7 seniles all day' (the first level at Nova is 7C and the students are rarely beginners so the lessons are frightfully boring for the students unless the teacher acts like a monkey or worse窶蚤 drunk lunatic desperately seeking intelligent interaction), which is what my schedule seemed to be full of at this point.

When I was teaching in Chiba, I found out that one of my students was an ex-GEOS manager. There was an instant connection when I told her that I used to work for GEOS as well. We talked about our experiences and this is the result.

I was introduced to Taka Suzuki by Dan, the teacher I replaced. Dan assured me that "Taka" was a cool guy. They did a hippy trip to Kyoto- went by local train all the way and slept in stations and on park benches. We went to Roppongi together, Taka and I(he helped me buy my stereo)and he seemed like a good guy.