How are things going at Nova?

I have a couple of friends working as English teachers for NOVA.

They are waiting for news on their futures with the company, and apparently there will be a big staff meeting today.

I will be emailing them to see how things turned out, but if anyone else in Japan working for the company I'd love to hear what has been said and how it is all working out.

Nova is in a bit of a crisis and plans to close some 200 schools thoughout Japan, and consolidating some.

Nova has still not paid all the teachers that were supposed to be paid on the 14th- the "titled instructors" keep being told "tomorrow, no sorry, next week" but so far today still nothing in their accounts. Apparently rumours of a big staff meeting were just rumours.

There is a very long thread about Nova on LetsJapan.org which gives a lot of inside information although some of it is hearsay/ speculation. It's over 100 pages but they might want to scroll through some of the more recent ones.

There have even been articles in the Japan Times (big one today) and overseas media (Australia, NZ and Canada so far) about the situation. I hope your friends have something lined up or are looking now because their chances of being paid next month are virtually nil I'm afraid. I wish them luck.

I haven't got a reply from the yet.
They only ever intended to have a little one year adventure in Japan. They have 3 months to go, so I suppose they will be starting the "Holiday" part of their journey a bit early. Assuming they have enough money reserves.

My selfish part of this was that I was going to go visit them in a couple of months. Maybe I'll be booking a hotel now.

It doesn't look good for nova: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/culture/waiwai/news/20071004p2g00m0dm...

Ahh well.
I received an email from my friends last night.
Poor people. They've been unpaid for the past 2 months, and any hope of unemployment sounds slow in coming. So they're looking for the first plane home. A sad end to their adventure.

Very tough for people who arrived recently in particular. The teachers have been treated very badly with evictions, non-payment of salaries and almost no information coming from the Head Office. I hope your friends enjoyed some of their stay in Japan anyway and are able to come back some time, or find good jobs in places like Korea or Taiwan.