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

The Sankei Shimbun is reporting (under the Scandals section, quite correctly) that Anders Lundquist, who has been with Nova since it was founded by Sahashi, has submitted his resignation.

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.

This comes from hurry_up_and_die in the forums and will either make you laugh or scream. The Japanese staff would like you to come into work today. Apparently, they seem to think Nova is recovering.

To instructors who have come to work today,

Nova has submitted its latest report [PDF] to the JASDAQ stock exchange on how it will improve its reporting of information. Bear in mind that the purpose of this report to demonstrate to JASDAQ that Nova can follow the stock exchange's rules. JASDAQ isn't concerned with how Nova operates.

In terms of content, it's not much different from their previous report.

Despite a promise to pay teachers on the 19th, Sahashi could not deliver. So what does he do? Issue another meaningless fax.

The fax is new but not new. In fact, if you compare it to his previous faxes, it looks like he merged them all together and added in a few new bits here and there. He is still saying, be patient, I'm trying to get some money, good luck.

Mod in the forums gives us a rough translation:

Teachers didn't get paid today. Sahashi's word really means nothing now. The man cannot be believed. After his October 12 fax asking teachers to be a bit more patient until the 19th for their pay, Sahashi has failed to live up to his word. Sadly, the only person who seems to know what is going with Nova an its pay is Sahashi and he is nowhere to be found.

Now this is really bad news: some Nova schools have taken it upon themselves to close up shop due to the lack of teachers. As the article points out, Nova is losing control. Here's a translation of the report from the Sankei Shimbun.

It looks as though in trying to scrape together cash to pay everyone and keep Nova afloat somehow, Sahashi has made deals with some shady people. ZAKZAK ran an story yesterday about the president of Roots and the equity warrants Nova issued. Here's a translation of the story.

The current edition of the Yomiuri Weekly has published a fairly long article on the stock dealings of Nova that paints Sahashi in a poor light (as if you didn't know that already). Here's a translation of the article.

The General Union held a protest outside the the Labour Standards Office in Osaka today and filed a complaint against Nova for delaying wage payments to its employees

The Japan Times:

According to the union, salary payments due in mid-September were delayed for some 4,000 foreign teachers and Nova notified them that the payment scheduled for the middle of this month will be postponed until Friday.