Frustration

So I received this letter two days ago detailing my current job situation:

Thank you for requesting re-employment with G.education. Since taking over operations at Nova we have put all our efforts into proceeding with the reopening of branches. As a result, we expect to have approximately 130 branches offering Nova lessons during December 2007.
At the same time, the Trustees in Bankruptcy are making progress with dissolving Nova Corporation. At present they have started proceeding sequentially with terminating leases of properties which will not be taken over by G.education and the problem of unpaid wages. With the cooperation of property owners, we have managed to rapidly reopen many branches but now intend to more closely align branch reopenings with the current business situation. The process of opening the Ekimae Ryugaku branches and restarting lessons requires a lot of time, personnel and expense. To enable us to offer lessons even more quickly to students who still have unused lesson points, we will shift the focus of development from the branches to expanding Ochanoma Ryugaku lessons with a view to even opening new Multimedia Center facilities overseas.

To be able to continue business operations at Nova, it is essential that administrative and branch operations are run with a suitable staffing level. It is for this reason that when existing contracts expire, G.education needs to conduct the offer of new contracts with caution and strictness based on employment adjustments. Thus the current situation unavoidably means that it is difficult to offer positions to everyone.

This is an agonizing decision to ahve to make while dealing with request for employment at
G.education, but is the decision that must be made for both the company and Nova operations. We ask for your understanding in this matter.


Takashi Ono
Chief Executive Officer
G.education Co. Ltd.

Basically what it means is that I won't have my contracted renewed when it expires in February and therefore have to find a new job before my current work visa ends on February 14th. Now this is extremely frustrating because up until two days ago Nova had told me that my contract would be renewed as well as another one year work visa, thus I have not been looking for jobs or researching how to manage my visa situation. Luckily due to my living situation with Ayuko's family and the fact that January through March is the big hiring season for English teachers I should be able to find another job, but the real problem is my work visa. If I change it to a three month tourist visa I am not sure if I can be hired by another company or not and as the government office dealing with visas is closed for the holidays I have to wait to find out what my options exactly are. So once again Nova has giving me the big middle finger. Awesomeness once more. So not exactly sure how things will play out at this point, but I sure as hell won't let Nova ruin my plans once again. Just suppose I'll have to adapt to the situation and come out ahead somehow. While this whole experience with the business part of my stay here has been incredibly shitty, pardon the french, it has made me much more cognizant of my financial responsibilities and goals. So as Calvin's dad would say it has been a very character building experience!

Merry Christmas!

In Japan it is officially Christmas now and while I have been poor at posting recently that will be remedied. However seeing as it is now 1:27AM and I have to work today this will be a short post. As in goodnight and enjoy the pics.

Third day of work today and we are slowly starting to get more students. The vast majority of them are returning students and while at this point there is just a few students spaced throughout the day, in a couple of weeks branches are expected to be back to full capacity. Today I only had to teach one student and so the rest of my day was spent reading, talking with the other teachers, sleeping, and various other forms of amusement. As mentioned before I'm lucky in the sense that all of the other teachers are fun and personable people and we had a lot of fun today just killing time with stories and jokes.
One example is that another teacher is currently dating the granddaughter of the man who founded Shinsei Bank in Japan, which is one of the major banks at least here in Osaka and possibly all over Japan. So her only job is to spend money. Seriously. She has an allowance of 300,000 US dollars a month and I'm fairly certain this doesn't include the money she is allotted for her penthouse apartment and equally posh house. She also lavishes her boyfriend with clothes and various other gifts, so all in all I think he is a pretty lucky son of a gun. So needless to say I work with a varied group of very different, but very fun teachers.

Random J-girl cosplay pics

Al


Thought I'd spice up the blog with some randomness. Also the recent changes to the blog layout are due to the fact that I figured out how to switch the settings into English and now just play around with them.

Well yesterday was my first day of working at my actual branch in Kongo and it was very uneventful due to the fact that we don't have any actual students at this point. There were three other teachers there, out of eight total, and after some general cleaning of the branch we spent the next six hours just reading books and magazines as we tried to kill time. However its good to just finally be working again and having something to do during the long winter days.

The other teachers seem nice and the only unfortunate aspect is that the head teacher at my branch is a huge ass kisser. This is pretty common among a good portion of teachers who have worked for Nova for any long period of time as for them this is their career, not just a way to live in Japan for a few years. This guy has been working for Nova for 14 years and has only advanced one step above me in the corporate ladder which shows a serious lack of ability on his part. Sadly this hasn't stopped him from acting like our job requires the utmost dedication and effort in order to please our Japanese masters. However I'm not really too concerned as he doesn't hold any power over me except to be annoying and after living with my sisters I can certainly deal with that. Just kidding girls!

Also at this point I am contemplating of quitting Nova in May to be able to come home for a couple of friends weddings and just see friends and family in America for a month or so. Since Ayuko is moving to Tokyo in May as well it would give her some time to get settled before I would move there and start looking for another job. The reason I would quit Nova is that we can't take any sort of leave of absence and the new company screwed us over as far as paid holidays went as well, so after my whole experience with Nova I understandably have no loyalty. Especially considering the new company has already defaulted on a great deal of promises they have made as well. Ah the life of a corporate drone! Of course I am also looking into going back to graduate school for business, so who knows.

Either way I got paid a small advance from Nova today so I won't be starving in the streets and overall I'm really happy to be working again in general. Also not sure if I've mentioned this before, but since all of this financial hoopla has happened I've decided to be much more focused on my finances and save the great majority of my paychecks. My current goal is to have at least ten thousand dollars saved by March/April including both savings and the back pay I will receive from the government. I plan to mark this as my retirement fund/emergency fund and pay into it as much as I can from now on. Sadly this makes me feel like a real adult...