Japan - Day 264

Alas my journey to Asia is coming to an end - I’ll be back on Canadian soil by December 3rd. The past month and a half has given way to some pretty big changes here in the Land of the Rising Sun – I don’t even know where to start. I hear the beginning is usually the best though, so let’s try it from there…

If I were to try and pinpoint the beginning of the end I guess I’d have to say it was September 13th. Pay day. However, this particular month pay day came and went without the pay. When we got to work the staff had no answers for us, only that they were sorry. I realize it wasn’t their fault we hadn’t been paid yet, but it was obvious they had known beforehand that we weren’t going to be paid on time. It would’ve been nice if they’d given us a heads up. I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. Later in the day we received a fax from head office apologizing for the delay in payment with some lame excuse blamed on the banks… The fax went on to say that we’d be paid by the 18th… So 5 days late. Okay fine, I can live with that – after borrowing 5000 yen from Mari, the Japanese branch manager, to get me through the week.

Skip forward to October 15th. (I’m now in Tokyo). Pay day. Again minus the “pay” component. This time however, there was forewarning. On October 12th we received a fax saying that Nova didn’t have the funds to pay all the teachers on time and that we should be paid by the 19th. Okay 5 days late again, I can survive – I had an inkling that this might happen so I budgeted for it a bit, but after a trip to Korea and a move to Tokyo I was stretched pretty thin. October 19th came and went with no pay and no fax. The next day there was a fax from the President (who no one can seem to locate) apologizing again for the hardship we have been put under… Blah blah blah… “Dark clouds are parting” or some other bullshit rhetoric… Now we’re being told that “around the 25th” we’ll be paid. I’m no longer holding my breath. A lot of other teachers are no longer showing up for work. I continue to go because: A) I feel bad for the students; and B) what else do I really have to do? (If I’m not at work then there’s a better chance I’ll be out doing something that involves spending money). Anyone want to guess what happened on the 25th? If you guessed “nothing” then you’re wrong.

A lot happened on the 25th of October. However, none of what happened involved a paycheck being deposited into my bank account. I got a text message from Akina, Japanese office staff from my branch in Sangenjaya, telling me that I didn’t have to go to work today – Nova was temporarily closed. What? Okay, so now I’m up and on the internet trying to figure out what the hell was up. Turns out Nova filed for “corporate restructuring”. Basically asking for government protection from its creditors while it tries to sort things out - One step away from bankruptcy, and only delaying the inevitable. Nova’s going down. So they have until November 5th to find a sponsor to help bring them back from oblivion or to bite the bullet and file for bankruptcy. In the meantime all business is suspended. No work. No pay. No nothing.

This is basically the condensed version of the turn of events for Nova, previously the largest English Conversation School in all of Japan. There are many details I’ve left out, such as the emergency board meeting on the 24th where board members essentially kicked out the President. Or the fact that Japanese staff haven’t been paid longer than the teachers (they never got paid in September for the work done in August). Or the fact that there’s a chance that teachers can receive 80% of their unpaid wages from the government, if, and only if, Nova declares bankruptcy. Usually the timeframe for claiming unpaid wages has a one month turn around between filling out the paperwork and receiving a cheque, however the Nova case is different in the fact that there will be about 7000 people filing at the same time! Rumor has it that it could be very likely that we won’t be seeing any money from them for 6 months.

So that’s the situation here.

During this time I didn’t just sit around twiddling my thumbs. I was out applying and interviewing for new jobs. And I found one! With a pretty reputable company named Berlitz. I was set to start my training on November 5th.

So why am I going home?

Here’s the predicament… I haven’t been paid in 6 weeks, and I won’t be getting a full paycheck from Berlitz until Christmas. Despite emergency money sent from my family, there’s really no way I could survive in Tokyo for another 6 or 7 weeks without a source of income. On top of that the roundtrip flight I originally booked before moving Japan was scheduled for December 2nd. (At the time that was the furthest back it could be booked). I was informed that closer to December I could push it back further. Amy called American Airlines last week to see how far we could extend the return date, and it turns out that we have to use the tickets by February at the very latest. To add to this mess, my work visa also expires in February. Now there’s a chance that Berlitz would renew it for me, but not guaranteed given the contract I agreed to was per lesson and not salary-based.

So the way I saw it I had two options laid out in front of me: 1) I could take the job with Berlitz and live in relative-poverty for the next few months. Then return to Canada in February, hoping in the meantime to receive some sort of pay from Nova or the government. Or 2) I could cut my losses and return home on the originally scheduled December flight. This option would involve turning down the Berlitz job and instead using the money my family had sent to travel around Japan and see everything I wanted to see and then hopefully return home with no (or fewer) regrets.

This was not an easy decision at all. Since moving to Tokyo I’ve met so many cool people and there are so many different things to do and see here. It’s really amazing. Plus I really wanted to stay here at least a year. But is all the sacrifice worth being able to say I lived in Japan for a year? Is 10 months really that different? It just seems the most logical (financially) to pack up and head home in December. So after a lot of internal debate, I made my decision – I’m going back to Canada. At least temporarily.

I should come as no surprise that I’ve already started looking into new English schools to apply to. Hopefully I should in and out of Canada within two months. My goal is to be out and seeing the world again by February. Hopefully it’s in the cards. For now I’m going to enjoy the month of November and see the sights of Japan that I haven’t been able to see yet. I hope to go to Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and Hokkaido before I go. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas of how else I could spend my last month here lemme know! I’m also hoping to go to Tokyo Disney J