Well jokes on me I guess as the company that bought out NOVA will now only rehire about half of the foreign teachers and J staff. More info on this can be found here:

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071113TDY02307.htm

It is still unknown as to whether I will be offered a job or not and no one living in Osaka that I know has been offered a job yet, but that doesn't mean much. If I have not been offered a job within the next week or so it seems very unlikely that I will get hired back, so that is rather depressing. However I do have two more interviews this week, so maybe one of those will work out. I apologize for any false hope, but we were once again given misleading information from surprise surprise a Japanese company dealing with foreigners! This whole situation hasn't lessened my desire to stay here for another couple of years, but it has shown me that Japan is sadly still very xenophobic and quietly racist. I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but when the Japanese media was covering all of the NOVA scandal all they kept mentioning was how horrible it was for the students to lose their disposable income while nary a mention was made of teachers being evicted from apartments, penniless, jobless, and starving. So while almost all of my interactions with individual Japanese have been amazing, their society at large is shockingly anti-foreigner with no concept of discrimination or racism. Overall I'm just hoping I don't turn into some cynical ex-pat due to my poor business experiences in this country...but the future is looking bleak.