Your weekly udate

It's maybe been a bit over a week actually-sorry about that. We are getting thinner by the day. I may be forced to eat my English grammar texts lest I lose the energy to type. Actually things are going well! I've picked up some more privates so I'm working approximately 28 hours-a month! As it stands though that's more than enough pay for my rent and food and maybe a few luxuries so I'm really doing alright. If I had had the foresight to hand out my business cards to all my students before Nova went spiraling into the ground I would probably be working 28 hours a week instead and making more money than I ever did with Nova! You know what they say about hindsight though!

I'm trying to use my free time to study for the big Japanese test on December 2nd. You'd think that with a lot of free time you would have lots of free time to study but actually it means that you have lots of free time to waste. In fact I should be studying right now instead of posting this! But I'll get right to it after this I promise. I tried a listening practice test last night and was overjoyed to realize that I actually got most of it. My listening is my biggest weakness.

There are a couple of new members in our house that I have failed to mention so far. The first is an aquarium. I bought it a couple months ago actually, before things went horribly wrong with Nova. I've got four Zebra Danio fish in there and two Amano shrimps. The shrimps are a lot of fun to watch and real easy to take care of (I don't feed them they just eat stuff off the bottom) so I think today I'm going to go out and get a bunch more. Here's a video:



The second new family member, which I got just a couple of days ago is this:

Yes I know, Mom is probably cringing and saying what I silly boy I am! But I figured heck, if I'm going to have a lot of time off in the next couple of months then this is exactly what I need. And with my 18,000 yen worth of Bic Camera points and the high Cdn dollar, on my credit card it only came to about $180 which is a full $170 less than it cost me to buy a PS2 in 2003!

I'll have some more updates soon but now I gotta go do a little studying before my next private lesson at 3 o'clock!

One more thing...

I've got a private lesson tomorrow. I picked up a few more since Nova closed-all former Nova students. I'm sort of kicking myself for not giving out my contact information to all the students immediately after the money troubles first started. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess. I've since made up some business cards (designing business cards is really fun!) and whenever I see students I give them out. It happens more than you would think-especially when you live in the same place as you teach. I got one class that pays 2500 yen an hour and another one that pays 4000 yen an hour. That combined with my regular private class is enough to pay for my 40,000 yen rent which should help stem the money hemorrhaging until the unemployment cheques start pouring in. We're supposed to get 80% of our regular wage for 3 months which I plan on taking full advantage of-if it indeed comes to that.

Anyways I'm doing this one class for 2500 yen an hour because it is such a scam. The guy (a really decent chap) is into watching Seinfeld. He watches the show and then types up whatever he can understand from the script. Then we watch it together on his Ipod and I fill in the missing sections and correct any listening mistakes he's made. I can't imagine a better job than being paid $25 an hour to watch Seinfeld. Ok it isn't $25 anymore but it was before our cursed dollar decided to skyrocket. On the other hand it makes purchasing things over here seem really cheap (wow this $450 PS3 is actually only $320 over here!)
Anyways I gotta get to bed-I want to be well rested for my Seinfeld lesson tomorrow morning.

More pleasant updates

Well I went to Kyushu and survived. Barely. I went for a wedding and the trip went well except for the fact that I forgot one important thing. I won't tell you what, but here's an analogy-it was like going on a snowboarding trip and forgetting your snowboard. There I said it now lets never mention it again. Kyushu was nice. The wedding families paid for our hotel (and gave us 10,000 yen each to help pay for the trip). I had basically the most scenic view one could ever expect for a Sunday morning breakfast:
The wedding itself was interesting. Well actually it wasn't really. It was a Western wedding with a reverend and everything. He was of American background but born in Japan. The whole wedding was in Japanese. The wedding reception-now that was interesting. We got in there, found our tables and I found this sitting on my plate looking up at me:
Fortunately the food got more appetizing after that. We listened to about four boring speeches where half the people (at least 200 hundred in total) looked to be nodding off (including me). Then they broke out the alcohol which I think was what everyone was waiting for and then they started bringing out some different courses of food. Soon the equivalent of the best man and maids of honour (none of them actually participated in the wedding) got up to make their speeches. Only by that time, everybody was busy drinking and eating and talking and not a single soul stopped to listen except for the bride and the groom and myself-who couldn't understand a single word being said. The speakers literally faced the married couple and made their speech while being completely ignored (and drowned out) by the rest of the crowd. I was appalled.

Went to an airshow today. It was interesting for me, not so much for Fumiko. She went home after about an hour. I certainly could have predicted that! I'm not sure why she wanted to come in the first place. I was a bit shocked to learn that she had no idea what "kamikaze" meant. We saw a picture of one in the pamphlet. It's a Japanese word for goodness sakes! She said when she was young the teachers never talked about any of that stuff. Here's a pic:

We are in desperate straits-please wire 100 million yen immediately

Well it's not quite as bad as all that yet although I'll be sure to let you know if I have to start teaching for food. As if foreigners don't have a hard enough time integrating in Japanese society and making a living. What's going to happen if the Japanese believe all they need to get an English lesson is a can of corn? For anybody who has been here for more than 6 months, there's no excuse for this nonsense. Have people not heard of saving for a rainy day? I consider myself quite fortunate compared to some of the people around me. I've got a house for a reasonable rent, a 3-year visa and a small war-chest thanks to some financial self-control-my good friend Chad fondly refers to me as a "cheap-ass".

One of my co-workers will be gone quite soon however. She had the bad luck of having her visa run out just as Nova shut down. We weren't paid this September so she and her boyfriend (who also worked for Nova) have no money to pay for their rent-or food for that matter. The Immigration office is no longer approving visas for employees of Nova which means that she has to be out of the country by the 22nd of November. It's really quite sad that this had to happen. What makes it even worse is that Nova seems to have been mismanaged into the ground and that the CEO was possibly (probably) involved in illegal financial activities to the detriment of the company for his own gain.

I'm not sure what Peter's plan is. He's definitely one of the luckier ones in this whole deal, ie. he has some money to live off of and he has an apartment that hasn't been defaulted on and he has a 3-year visa. However he doesn't seem to be basking in glow of unemployment the way I have been. He was always more of an idealist than me though. A real teacher's teacher. The very idea of just sitting around doing nothing just does not seem to appeal to him. I hope he can stick it out. Well that's all the complaining I have to do about Nova tonight. I'll make a nice new post of more pleasant material.