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

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:

Nichii Gakkan, a medical / education business has confirmed that it intends to purchase shares of the English conversation school chain Gaba in an attempt to bolster its education business. The company plans to spend up to 10 billion yen (around 127 million dollars) to make Gaba a wholly owned subsidiary. Nichii said it will buy at least the 26,390 shares owned by Gaba's main shareholder, Daiwa Corporate Investment Co. It set no maximum number of shares that it will purchase.

The offer price of 200,000 yen per share is a 53% premium over Friday's close. The board of Gaba, a company listed on the Mothers section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, has agreed to the move.

Or if you're interested in an alternate title, "Gaba cashes in its chips." I think if I were offered a 53% premium on shares that are worth less than half of their initial value in a moribund industry, I'd be tempted to get rid of them.

This bit caught my eye:

Even though its offerings have expanded beyond its mainstay preparatory courses for medical and nursing licenses, it is still struggling. The firm expects the Gaba brand to help it win contracts for corporate English training and to expand its online offerings."

A look at Nichii Gakkan's English lessons shows that they offer the standard range of TOEIC lessons and survival English for travelers. Moreover, it looks like the lessons are presented in some sort of e-learning Flash format with cheap-looking animations. I wonder what the attraction is given who widespread ultra-cheap lessons via Skype are these days?

What value does Nichii Gakkan see in the Gaba brand? Is it really that strong? What know-how does Gaba have other than its list of business clients, and is it worth paying 10 billion yen for that? One wonders...

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nuclear crisis, an article published in May in the Japan Times about an ALT returning to finish his contract isn't so outdated.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.

"Honestly, it came down to the people," Hauan said when asked why he ultimately decided to return May 10.

Besides, he added, he constantly received updates from his Japanese employers about the situation in Fukushima and was aware that things were safer than they were portrayed by some Western media.

In the early stages of the disaster, the Western media "reporting" was hysterical, but since then, they've calmed down and collected themselves. Now the public is left wondering if they can trust all the downplaying by the government.

Three months after the disaster and the truth is only finally starting to come out--reactors one, two, and three suffered a melt down and probably a "melt-through," too. Cesium has shown up in tea leaves as far away as Shizuoka, the water treatment system TEPCO is using to filter radioactive water had to be stopped after only five hours, and an increasing number of residents in and around Tokyo are asking for more radiation monitoring.

However, back in Tamura, 35km from the Fukushima reactor, life has "more or less returned to normal." In this case, normal means wearing long sleeves and a mask when outside, making sure the kids don't put any dirt or sand in their mouths, and avoiding some of the locally-grown food.

The image that seems to be taking shape now is that the nuclear disaster is far from over and the new normal will likely consist of a permanent exclusion zone. Many of the locals must be wondering if they will ever be able to return home.

Consider this an open thread. Anybody have information on how teaching has been affected in the Tohoku region? Business as usual, or has hiring been difficult?

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.

Before the Miraikan officially re-opened on the 11th, I was lucky enough to be invited to a special viewing of the "Making of the Sky Tree" exhibit on the 10th.

The exhibit covers the construction of the Sky Tree and contains some stunning video and photography. This in itself was interesting but what stole the show for me was the huge six-meter globe made of over 10 thousand OLED panels hanging above everything in the exhibition hall.

This thing was mesmerizing. If they could make a version for the home, I'd get in line to buy one. It sounds mundane, but watching the clouds swirl around the earth and seeing the world transition from day into night certainly beats anything on TV these days.

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.

There was the spectacular collapse of Nova that exposed it as a criminal enterprise. Then there was the sudden collapse of GEOS Australia in which GEOS Japan reassured everyone that everything was fine...only for the company to go bankrupt itself.

If you think these are pretty tame examples, how about Berlitz suing its instructors for trying to exercise their right to strike? If this kind of assholerly isn't enough, surely no one could top Fortress Japan's flat out extortion when it came to signing up robbing new students.

You know what would be worse than these examples of abuse and thievery? Using the Tohoku Kanto earthquake to make it look like teaching English is a heroic effort. Oh, wait...that's been done:

Yes, GaijinPot thinks the aftermath of a tsunami and an unfolding nuclear crisis is a great time to come and work in Japan. Teaching English=rebuilding Japan!

Japan doesn't need you. It needs electricity. It needs to get the Fukushima reactors under control. Survivors need hot food and a warm roof over their heads.

Shame on these schools for using a disaster to promote their businesses. This ad campaign is not about what you can do for Japan--it's about the schools desperately trying to find teachers. I have a feeling that nobody wants to work anywhere near Fukushima.

By all means come to Japan to teach, but don't think that working in Hiroshima or Shizuoka is helping to rebuild Japan. If you want to help rebuild, donate to the Red Cross.

The March 19th edition of the Toyo Keizai magazine reports an embarrassing situation for G.communication.

According to the article (see attached PDF), G.com was looking to raise to some money last October, so it sought financing from Yohohama-based BOW Networks and put up a sizable chunk of its shares in G.Taste, G.Networks, and Yakiniku Saki as collateral. The shares amounted from around 4 to 10 per cent of G.com's issued stock and had a value at the time of about 500 million yen.

When G.com never got its shares back, they realized that something was wrong. The office that BOW Networks had near JR Shin-Yokohama Station was empty. The landlord said that they were four months behind on their rent. Registered mail sent to the president's residence was returned marked, "Unknown address."

Who are or were BOW Networks? The company was set up 20 years ago in Miyazaki Prefecture and originally sold golf equipment. The company moved its headquarters to the Kanto area 11 years ago and apparently has been dealing in security devices ever since.

Why would G.com go to them for half a billion yen? When G.com took over Nova and started expanding its business, it became a member of the Incubator Bank's small and medium business network and used it to finance its growth. But when the bank collapsed last September, it needed to find another backer.

Initially, Hanshin Shuhan, a Kobe-based liquor distributor, was named as a potential sponsor. While Hanshin Shuhan apparently liked to tout itself as a mover and shaker, the reality was that it had little money. Even though it acted big in putting up Asrapport Dining's (a JASDAQ-listed company it owned) shares as collateral and applied for 400 million yen from the Incubator Bank, the company was just barely scraping by.

So it comes as no surprise that talks between G.com and Hanshin Shuhan fell apart at the end of last year, and now someone has absconded with G.com's shares. G.com is apparently refusing to divulge any further details about what happened, but Toyo Keizai wonders if the breakdown in talks and missing shares aren't connected somehow.

Comment: There you have it. G.communication is the largest eikaiwa in Japan after snapping up Nova and GEOS, but it apparently gambles with its money and associates with shady businesses. Isn't that comforting to know? Then again, as I've talked about often here, poor management isn't just a failing of eikaiwa, it's a feature.

One aspect of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami is that it has caused certain food items to disappear from stores all over the Kanto region. Although I live in Chiba, hundreds of kilometers away from the disaster area, you'd be hard pressed to find milk, rice, bottled water, bread, instant noodles, or any other packaged ready-to-eat item. That said, the shelves are still full of fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, and fish.

The shelves at my local supermarket look like this:

These food items started flying off the shelves last Sunday. I knew something was amiss as I headed out with my wife to do our Sunday shopping. The first thing was the huge traffic snarl right in front of where we live. People were lining up around the block to get gas at the local gas station. The lineup stretched at least two blocks and was clogging up the intersection. We took a detour and headed to the supermarket. The parking lot was full (that was odd), so we went to Yamaya instead. We were greeted by empty shelves. All of the bottled water and rice was gone. Back to the supermarket, it was the same story. No bottled water, no rice, no bread, no ramen, no packaged food. It was all gone. A trip to two more supermarkets revealed the same. The shortage of food also extended to delivery services such as CO-OP and Pal System. Our order from CO-OP was missing all the packaged food we ordered.

My wife seems to think that all we need to do to prepare for an earthquake is to have just enough to survive for two or three days until aid arrives. The response to the tsunami tells me otherwise; coordination from the government has been bad. It's been a week and these items are still missing from store shelves. Food has also been slow getting to the disaster area. Perhaps the public knows better than to expect a coordinated response from the government?

With the JET Programme potentially slated for the chopping block, it seems that nobody is showing enough concern for the program's future. Cue JET alumni:

When current participants in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program gather, the discussion often focuses on English teaching methods. When the program's U.S. alumni get together, however, talk often turns to a weightier subject: U.S. foreign policy toward Japan.

[...]

Although the program has an uneven track record when it comes to improving Japanese students' English, it has quietly and unexpectedly become a powerful tool for achieving another objective: grooming the next generation of American leadership in U.S.-Japan relations.

US-Japan relations? Foreign policy? This sounds important.

The program's success in this regard is perhaps best demonstrated by the number of former JETs occupying Japan-related positions in both academia and in the U.S. government. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo alone employs 25 former JETs, and JET returnees have done Japan-related work at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

"The JET program created a fairly large cadre of people who had Japan experience," says Ben Dolven, a former JET and current director of the East Asia division at the Congressional Research Service, the official think tank of the U.S. Congress.

"You've got a core of people who have had this experience all over, who are now part and parcel of U.S. policymaking on Japan," he said.

In other words, "We worked in Japan and many of us got jobs related to Japan, so we need to keep JET." That's incredibly weak. There's more:

Dolven said that because JETs often work in rural areas, the program gives them a more nuanced view of the "real" Japan, a background that provides crucial context for better understanding the country and making informed policy decisions.

"There are lives being lived all over the country, and if you are just focused on Tokyo, you miss so much," Dolven said.

JETs have lived in "real" Japan, so they know better. People who have been to places like Tokyo or Kyoto don't know the truth only JET's can experience.

If these self-important and smug pronouncements are defenses of the JET Programme, then it can't be axed fast enough. When word came that JET was potentially on the government chopping block, I initially thought that Japan stood to lose a valuable source of goodwill. While the goodwill garnered by JET is certainly a valuable thing, I find it far-fetched to think that US-Japan relations will take a hit if JET is cut.

What made the government panel on waste so compelling was watching the mandarins squirm in their seats as they struggled to justify their existences. The panel put JET under the microscope because it doesn't think the program provides any bang for the taxpayers' yen. In their report [PDF], they note that the program has remained virtually unchanged in its 23 years and that the responsibilities at the national and local levels remain vague. One can't help but think that if the JET alumni were to the face the panel, their justifications would get more than a few laughs.

Time to pop some champagne as this past weekend marked the tenth year for the domain letsjapan.org. It's hard to believe this site has been up for a decade now.

It started around 1999/2000 when Chris and I created LJ on GeoCities to scratch an itch we had about working at GEOS. I registered letsjapan.org in January of 2001 and the rest is history.

Sadly, due to crashed hard drives and my own stupidity, I don't have much of the old website on file save for this screenshot.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can always look at the old LJ on the Wayback Machine. Back then, I used IBM Homepage Builder to create and manage everything. I later switched over to Post Nuke and then Drupal, which the site currently runs on.

With any luck, LJ will be around for another 10 years.

This is revolting. Tatsuya Ichihashi has written about his 31 months as a fugitive while in prision. According to the book's publisher, Gentosha, the book is "'part of an act of contrition for the crime," and said he plans to hand over any royalties to Hawker's family.'"

Are you kidding me? The book describes how Ichihashi did everything to evade the law from "sewing his nose with needles in a public lavatory" to using scissors to slice up his lips, to cutting off two moles on his face. Then he went and had plastic surgery.

I agree with Caroline Pover:

Now I understand that there is human interest in this “story” and this book. I understand that human nature means that we are often interested in the sinister and the macabre, often for reasons we cannot explain and perhaps in a way we may not be particularly comfortable with. I understand that people are fascinated by how Ichihashi escaped and how he survived for so long on the run. I fully expected there to be a book at some point, and I don’t really blame the general public for wanting to read it.

What I don’t understand is how this book has been allowed to be released now. BEFORE the trial. Only in the past few days have tentative dates for the trial even been set — surely the publishers must have approached Ichihashi’s representatives knowing that they could produce the book before the trial, and Ichihashi’s representatives possibly thought to seize the opportunity to gain public sympathy.

She also gives contact information for Gentosha is you want to tell them what you think about the book.

I wonder if the book will influence the trial as Ichihashi may go before lay judges. If the judges lighten his sentence because they sympathize with his life on the run, then justice will not have been served.

This was mentioned in comments in a previous thread on GEOS, but the Honolulu school is no longer accepting students. The Honolulu page on GEOS.net looks like this:

When you go to GEOS.net, there is no mention of the Honolulu school anywhere on the page. So, by "no longer accepting enrollments" they mean "closed," right?