The God damned plane has crashed into the mountain!!

Das Nova ist kaputt!!

You heard it here first folks. Actually no you probably heard it first in the Toronto Star, right under the headline ESL teachers left in limbo in Japan. Things are not looking good right now. For Nova I mean-don't worry about me I'm fine. Basically it's the Enron of Japan. A private school with a mere 480,000 students was run into the ground by an incompetent owner. It's one of those things that in retrospect you could see coming and yet at the same time still not believe could be possible. We're talking about the school that controls 60% of the English conversation pie.

Let me reiterate that I am fine. In fact I am enjoying being able to not work on a Saturday or Sunday for the first time in two and a half years (of course there's a typhoon today-what are the odds?) On the other hand there are people in this country who are not fine. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that they are screwed. I know people who have barely been in the country for a month. They haven't even had time to adjust to a foreign country and all of a sudden they have no job, an apartment eviction and a months worth of work for which they might not ever see compensation. Oh and did I mention they probably have NO money? Fortunately for the Americans their government is willing to fly teachers home provided that they repay their goodwill once they get back to America. I don't know if everybody will get that opportunity though.

It's a bloody crime that Nova brought these people into the country when they knew full well that they were a sinking ship. It's criminal that they deducted money from teachers salaries to pay their rent and then never bothered to actually pay the rent.

The Nova boss has gone AWOL and I must say I can't blame him after all that's gone wrong. I'm sure most of the teachers are hoping that he has taken the honourable Japanese way out and saved the courts a whole lot of trouble.

I'll keep people posted!