Shawn's blog

No surprise here. Sahashi officially filed an appeal of his three and a half year sentence for embezzlement with the Osaka District Court on Wednesday. Typical of his defiance during his trial and ever since he was ousted from NOVA, Sahashi asserted once again that he had acted to prevent NOVA from going bankrupt.

ＮＯＶＡ・猿橋元社長側が控訴

2009年9月3日

From J-Cast we learn some more about the state of eikaiwa and the foreign language market in Japan. I've highlighted Yano Research surveys that illustrate the continuing contraction of the market before, and J-CAST touches on this research to show how the market is changing. Here's a summary of the article.

Here's some video to show you what I'm talking about when I wrote about Fuji TV using The Terminator as their election theme this year:

G.communication continues to believe that the NOVA bunny has some value left in keeping it as the mascot of the company. I saw their latest commercial last night, not long after the news had broadcast that Sahashi had been found guilty and sentenced to prison. Here's the latest NOVA commercial.

I take back what I said in my last post. It's not over with Sahashi. He was released on bail last night following his sentencing. The Asahi shimbun, among other papers, carried a report of the events in the courtroom yesterday. Here's a summary of that article.

I'll keep this short and sweet: The court found Sahashi guilty of embezzling money from NOVA's employee welfare fund and sentenced him to three and a half years in jail.

According to the ruling, on July 20, 2007, Sahashi withdrew ¥320 million from NOVA's shayuukai welfare fund, converted it into cheques, and then deposited the money into an account held by NOVA Kikaku, a company that he controlled.

There are times when I think about resurrecting the Ask the Sensei column. Today is one of those times. There appears to be an endless supply of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed university graduates desperate to work in Japan. The latest request for work to land in my inbox comes from Josh.

Flipping through the channels this evening, I nearly spat my dinner out as I landed on Fuji TV and caught one of their commercials for their coverage of the upcoming election. This is undoubtedly a historic election for Japan as all indications point to a major defeat of the LDP. So, how would you go about marking this momentous changing of the guard? Some sort of historical retrospective put to martial music? Something more somber with subdued trumpets in the background?

How about The Terminator?

How did this get past the editors?

Regarding the Aug. 15 editorial "Dangerous revisionist sentiment": Little did I imagine that I would come across such an odious article. I totally agree with Toshio Tamogami, who has been bravely trying his best to convince the mentally retarded aliens who read The Japan Times that Japan was not at all to blame for World War II. The left is looking for ways to disgrace Japan, and The Japan Times is part of the left.

The legal woes of former NOVA president Nozomu Sahashi aren't about to let up. While a decision on his current trial is due to be handed down on August 26, the trustees overseeing NOVA's bankruptcy have sued him for aggravated breach of trust, seeking ¥2.1 billion (roughly $22.6 million USD) in damages over the sale of videophone units by Ginganet, a company in which Sahashi was the sole share holder, to NOVA.