Job Discussion Forums

[budgie]

Any survivors from the Nova crash of 2007?
Anybody working at Nova now?

Looking for comparison between then and now.

For refugees, how and when did you get laid off? How did you survive after?

[U99A]

I stayed on for about 3 and a half years after the bankruptcy. It was much smaller scale than NOVA. No yearly raises. I did teach fewer lessons though.....
Finally left and got my CELTA- taught in the Middle East for a while.

[Bombadil]

Ex-NOVA here. Bailed out a year before it went belly-up (was mid-management, and the writing was absolutely on the wall if you looked - at least from mid-management perspective). Worked with an ALT company, then landed a nice gig at a private school.
Never had a day of unemployment.

[Solar Strength]

[marley'sghost]

Never worked for them myself. Only survivor I know personally, got his own room after the crash, and started his own school, taking his NOVA students with him. Doing fine now, by all accounts.

[steki47]

[Wintermute]

Was going through my old Japanese bookmarks folder and saw this site - haven't been here in ages. I was at Nova to the bitter end at the MMC. I remember the last day quite clearly. They'd shut the lights off in the 15th floor meal room and none of the lesson screens worked properly. November 2007 (can't remember the date now) was a big month. I remember seeing a lot of worried faces and thinking that it was never going to be this good again in Japan for teaching English.

I hustled for work everywhere for December 2007, I was luckier than most in that I had a pretty large pool of money to support me through the lean times. My biggest regret was not going back to Nova when it was bought out by G Com. My friends did and they got somewhere in the order of $1500 just to quit. 2008 was perhaps the hardest and most interesting year of my life in Japan. I remember doing every job under the sun for money. Worked at some great companies, IKEA being the best, and some not so good companies. I did a bit of acting and a crapload of private lessons at Tullys in Umeda.

Managed to land a full time job in 2009 with the Osaka YMCA. Not a bad gig but by then I was tired of eikaiwa and was very burnt out. That, and I didn't get along with my manager at all. All of my friends left around the middle of 2010 and the writing was on the wall. I flamed out in October 2010 and went home. I'm only now just getting over the effects of reverse culture shock however if I could somehow work again in Japan I'd probably jump. I'm seriously considering retiring in Japan.

I look back now and consider the 4 years I did at Nova as some of my best of my life. Not so much for the work but for the fact I was young, in one of the most interesting countries on the planet earning decent money, meeting people from nearly every country on Earth, eating great food, hiking in some of the best tracks in Japan and generally enjoying life. I don't miss the office politics or being sick every other month but looking back, even that wasn't so bad either because for all the bad days I had, there were 10 other great days.

Not sure what it is like now but from all accounts it is a shell of what it was in its glory days. Still, I don't hold it against people for sticking it out. There are worse jobs to do in Japan.

[mitsui]

Well, good if you had a decent experience in Osaka, but I am sure things have not improved.
I cannot imagine retiring in Japan.
First, you must be good at Japanese.
Second, you need a good job that pays well and one that gives you security. So many jobs are for limited contracts.
There are fewer young people and demand for English is less, plus wages have gone down.

Competition for good jobs in Osaka is fierce.
If you know the right people, that can help.
I applied for a university job in Osaka last year. It was for 3-5 years.
100 people applied for one position.

Maybe at this point it would be easier to get a job teaching kids, but there
are fewer kids than before.

[Wintermute]

[rxk22]

Why is the Osaka area so competitive? A lot less jobs than Tokyo but with aarge amount of gaijin wanting the fewer jobs?

[Solar Strength]

Interesting comments.

Osaka - I hear a lot of gaijin say that it's the best place to be in Japan and that the Japanese people there are the friendliest. I don't buy it. The Japanese are Japanese, wherever you go. Sure there's a difference between city and country, but whether it's Fukuoka - Nagoya - Tokyo - Osaka is all shades of grey.

Japan EFL is on life support. You'd be insane to quit your job back home and move here to teach English as a career. Good TEFL jobs are extremely hard to find in Japan now. Most of it is entry-level aimed at the "newbies" with no or little experience and low salary and few to no benefits and allowances.

If there was ever a time that TEFL in Japan was not a career, it's now.

Retire in Japan?

Again, you'd have to be crazy! Your language skills seem good, but that's only part of it.

The nuclear radiation in Fukushima is affecting water, food, fish, milk, etc. People are confused and scared because they cannot trust the Japanese government to tell them the truth or to get control of the situation. The demographic changes mean less working people and more elderly who cannot work, which means you, the working stiff, pays higher taxes to support those retired people. By the way, in 2015 consumption taxes will increase to 10%.

We have constant earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis that kill hundreds of people a year. More, if you consider 2011. I go to bed dressed recently because of all of the earthquakes we've had here, in case I need to run out of our apartment in the middle of the night. Some of these earthquakes are quite scary!

Finally, and this is important for a foreigner wanting to live here, Japan has become more nationalistic, and even more inward and insular, than before. The Japanese government is trying to militarize and there are, as you no doubt know, regional tensions with the senkoku islands and China and Korea.

I'm one of the people surprised that Japan was awarded the 2020 Olympics, considering all of the issues surrounding Japan.

Retire or work long-term in Japan?

I just don't get it.

[Wintermute]

[rtm]

[rxk22]

I like Osaka, and all, but it isn't a place where I'd fight to be there over say, Tokyo. And I don't even like Tokyo really.

i started my Japanese journey in Osaka, and I understand it's appeal. But from how the job market there has seemed insane for years, I wouldn't bother unless something landed in my lap.

As for retiring in Japan. perhaps that is 20-30 years from now, By which a lot of the nuclear and pop problems will be sorted out one way or another.
My wife is Japanese, so I could see retiring in Japan. Though I would want to retire someplace warm like Okinawa.

[mitsui]

Well my wife is from Osaka so I don`t agree.
She tends to say what she thinks.

I much prefer Kansai to Tokyo, but cannot get a job there.
All Japanese share similarities but there are regional differences too.

I don`t think radiation is that bad, but I don`t live up in Fukushima.

Abe definitely is nationalistic. Look at Debito`s website where he mentions the lecture from the person in government about making changes to Japan`s military.

I would rather retire somewhere else but as my wife is Japanese, a place like Okinawa or Kobe could be a compromise.