Viewing items with Tag: "teaching"

[source: japanprobe]

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is set to order Nova Corp., Japan’s largest English-language school operator, to suspend part of its business for six months for having violated the law governing the industry, ministry sources said Wednesday.

Specifically, they have been screwing their customers who sign up for long contracts by cheating them out of the 8 day cooling off period, as well as penalizing students who cancel mid-contract by calculating their already attended lessons at a higher point rate.

Nova group is therefore banned from creating 6 month or longer contracts with new students, which is where their primary income is. Even if this ban is incurred for just 30 days, with their mounting debts and plummeting public image, they are pretty much officially screwed. Employees of Nova should start looking for another job now, seriously people.

I also found this pretty picture of Nova's stock price! Isn't it beautiful?? (and udated live!)

This is a pretty sad story about a 22 year old girl from Coventry, UK who had only been in Japan for a few months teaching for Nova English school. She dissappeared after a house visit to one of her students, a 28 year old man, apartments in Chiba near Tokyo. She was found in the same apartment days later after her friends reported her missing, in a bathtub covered in sand.

Watching the video report below, its almost laughable the part where the BBC reporter goes:

"Detectives are hunting this man, Tatsuya Ishihashi. It was his flat in which the body was found. When police came here to talk to him, he ran away, and they lost him."

We lost him, Damnit! Oh well, lets go stop some REAL criminals without lights or bells on their bicycles!! ... enfuriating.

Watch the BBC short report below or the full story here.

So get this: I know its shocking every time a high ranking government official says something offensive, whether it is women being referred to as "baby-making machines" (hey- at least he apologized by saying he only meant that it was their ROLE IN SOCIETY he was referring to... not the actual women themselves), or the occasional "Gaijin are criminals" comments that seem to pepper the papers these days. Never fear though good people, there is a plan at work here. This is not simply random acts of racism, not just pot shots taken in the dark at the Rights of the Individual by a few intolerant individuals. So there is no need for concern. Allow me to illuminate.

Recently, Japan's Education Minister, Bunmei Ibuki (who it seems is also an amature chef, if not a gourmand) has been put over the perverbial flames about a comment he made regarding Human Rights, namely comparing Human Rights to, and I quote, "fatty butter."



This is the education minister here people! How the hell does someone come up with a metaphor like that one? You can't help but to picture this guy eating his grits over the morning paper and a cup of Joe (no offense joe). There he is, reading about another 12 year old commiting suicide due to bullying, and he's squirming in his chair wondering how he's going to spin this one, and a big fat chunk of butter dribbles off the old guy's chin, lands on the paper with a splat, and the dusty light bulb goes on with a "That's it!!!" he says to himself, "FATTY BUTTER, you overweight genious, you, fatty fucking butter."

But it gets better. Not only did he equate an immensely important philosophical concept about how to treat our fellow human beings with a vat of artery-clogging yellow gunk, he went on to say that

"No matter how nutritious it is, if one ate only butter every single day, one would get metabolic syndrome. Human rights are important, but if we respect them too much, Japanese society will end up having human rights metabolic syndrome."

I reapeat for posterity. HUMAN RIGHTS METABOLIC SYNDROME! What kind of bullshit is that? People don't exactly have heart attcks or have to drive around on those little single person golf carts at the supermarket stuffing the free samples down their gullets and choking for air everytime someone doesn't abuse them. I've never met someone who intentionally sucked their Human Rights out of themselves through a tube (Human Ripe-o-suction?)

It sounds to me like our friend Ibuki San has got a pretty bad case of political diarreah. It also seems that this guy should find a new job.

Dietician might be more appropriate.

Or maybe professional Ass-Helmet.


Read the article at China Post.

This one's been around, but worth revisiting. Having been an English teacher in Japan, it's good to remember that high school kids everywhere write goofy-ass stuff:


6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.



See the full list at The 25 Funniest Analogies (Collected by High School English Teachers).

The new education minister of Japan, Bummei Ibuki, today stated that he doesn't believe English to be a neccessary part of Elementary school education.

"I do not see the necessity at all. There is no use studying English unless children speak beautiful Japanese. Those who want to study English from elementary level can do so individually. I believe (elementary) schools only have to make children develop an interest in foreign countries."

Elementary level English education is now being discussed by the Central Education Council. If they decide to take English off the curriculum, it could have a major effect on jobs for foreign English teachers in Japan.