It’s been 6 months since I came home from Japan. It’s probably safe now to announce the semi-obvious: yes, I worked for NOVA. I didn’t have a pleasant time. This wasn’t because of the students, I might add. I had a great time getting to know them and befriending them, and I still keep in contact with a group of them.

No, what gave me the irrits was the extremely corporate nature of NOVA. And yes, it’s a corporation, with an aim to make profit. But there is such a thing as ethical profiteering, as well as corporate social behaviour. NOVA is an example of why the stock exchange is evil. Before I even arrived in Japan, the share price for NOVA had been dropping. Then in May this year, it was announced that NOVA was expecting a net loss of 3 billion yen (about US$30,000,000) due to expanding the number of branches to the point where each school was fighting not to lose students to another NOVA branch. All this resulted in NOVA trying to save money and make money any way it could, just to make the shareholders happy.

It was simply stupid business management. NOVA had a number of “satellite” schools that were staffed by teachers and admin from the main school in the area. These satellite schools would have a very small number of students, be open only a few days a week and would cost more in rent and overheads than the income received from the students.

Did you ever hear that story about how McDonalds refuses to close any stores? At best, they will relocate them, but never close them down, because it looks “bad” to the general public. Well, NOVA seemed to have much the same policy, despite the obvious losses they were incurring.

The large number of schools meant that they were always understaffed, and would basically hire any monkey who had scrapped through a year of college. The teachers were often disgruntled, due to some of the illegal activities and bizarre policies that NOVA perpetuated, as well as the constant overtime pushed onto them, whatever personal gripes they had with Japan and finally the stress that radiated off the Japanese staff.

My gods, I felt sorry for the Japanese staff. They would sometimes receive the treatment that some students received and get heckled by some teachers. They were under a huge amount of stress to get the numbers of sales up, keep the teachers well informed and the student customers happy. I wouldn’t have wanted to trade places with them for the world.

At one point, NOVA announced it was cutting back on all expenses in branches except paper, cleaning products and light fixtures. It went one step further at my school, where the Japanese staff were desperate to get some savings on the books – they stopped providing plastic garbage bags for the bin lining. The teachers were asked to fork up 1000 yen of their own money, per month, to cover the things like garbage bags, pens, paper and whiteboard markers that NOVA would no longer supply.

We told them to go stuff themselves.

One of the Japanese staff ended up paying for it all out of her own pocket.

NOVA did not give a shit about it’s stakeholders: the staff, teachers and students – the people who actually made it operate and turn a dollar. Instead, NOVA milked them all dry to appease the shareholder. Even to the point of illegal activities that are now being fought by the General Workers Union.

Another well-known example is NOVA accomodation. Oh gods. If it wasn’t for the Accomodation section, I would’ve perhaps worked there for longer. Lies, lack of answers, refusal to answer calls, rudeness, avoiding all the issues that tenants may bring up. THEN overcharging them. If you ever choose to work for NOVA, fine. But don’t live in their apartments. It will save you untold amounts of stress and frustration.

I completely understand that NOVA exists only to make a profit, not to provide gaijin with a cheap holiday. But anyone with basic business knowledge can tell you that their methods of operation were on the extremely dodgy side. If you want students to buy more tickets, then make sure that they can use the ones they already have, at the times that they want. What’s that? Don’t have enough teachers to fill the demand of lessons? They all seem to be quitting? Well, maybe you should try and keep your teachers happy with their jobs, by giving them the basic tools and training that they need. Don’t throw them in the deep end. Don’t make life difficult for them back in their apartments. And don’t tell them that they lack company spirit and threaten them with degrading their reports when instead you could be listening to their gripes and trying to fix them.

I’m convinced that the shareholder-over-stockholder nature of NOVA was what caused the awful behaviour I witnessed in some teachers. I met a large number of assholes whilst working for NOVA. But I did also meet the loveliest people. Teachers and students. There are good guys in NOVA and you don’t always have to look hard for them. I’d say that they’re better people than me, because they have more patience and will take being raped anally repeatedly without any lubricant.

When I announed to the students that I was leaving Japan and heading home, they threw me a great farewell party. I was given gifts and told that I was the favourite teacher of many students in the branch.

Damn, that made me feel vindicated. For the last 10 months, NOVA had been telling me that I wasn’t doing enough and had to put up, shut up and get on with it. Keep complaining and they’ll have to downgrade my “company spirit” mark, as if I were still in freaking high school. But I was a good teacher. I knew I was a damn good teacher. That’s why all the people I keep in touch with from Japan are my old students, and none of my old work colleagues.

So, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, it’s time to say that I will no longer be writing for the Teach section of 3yen. There’s not a lot for me to write now that I’m home, and most of what I could write would be secondhand anyway. I’ll still be around on other sections of the site, so please keep reading. There’ll be a new blogger here before long, with all the latest news, gossip and advice for teaching in Japan, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope I was entertaining and informative for you.

Ja ne.

A recent comment:

hey there, first of all I’d just like to thank you for this wonderful website, you have certainly put up a lot of useful information about NOVA and teaching in Japan in general. My name is David, I am a student who lives in NZ and am interested in participating the NOVA program.I am thinking about applying in the beginning of November when all my exams have finished (this is my last semester b4 I get my BA)….Does NOVA usually recruit teachers around that time ( the end of the year, Christmas)? and if I’m granted an interview, what sort of questions do they usually ask you? would be great if you can help me out…looking forward to hear from you

Hey David,

First of all, until you have properly graduated (that means, you have the diploma in your hands and photos of you in a silly hat framed on the wall), you will not be considered a graduate by the Japanese Government and will not be eligible for a work visa (at least, not the work visa required for teaching English). Being eligible to graduate is not enough. You must have graduated.

If you can’t wait that long to get to Japan, then NOVA is your easiest option. They will hire you for Flexi-Time work (part time) and you can do that on a working holiday visa, which is available to New Zealanders, I believe.

About the interview, have a read here and here, they’ll give an idea about various eikaiwa interview processes, including NOVA’s. It shouldn’t be to difficult to get accepted by NOVA although you may want to be warned: The best times to be hired are in September and May. If you tell them that you’re open to leave for Japan at any time, that will help your chances.
Good luck!

Summer in Japan is a dead time, as far as getting an English-teaching job is concerned. I’m not enirely sure why, but I guess it’s because many students disappear for their summer holidays. Some schools, like NOVA actually sell them travel packages and homestay trips, where they can practise their newly-acquired English skills in an English-speaking country.

So, if you’re trying to get a job in June, July and August, don’t be terribly surprised if you’re rejected. This trend is even more apparent now that schools like NOVA and ECC are reportedly hiring more people from inside Japan than outside, to save costs.

So when is the best time to get hired? September and March, it seems. I can vouch personally for September, because when I wanted to delay my arrival in Japan from mid-September to mid-October, my eikaiwa told me that wasn’t possible, that they needed in in Japan as soon as possible. April is also when schools start their year in Japan, so many students sign up in March and April to supplement their studies at school or university.
So, that’s one factor you might want to take into account when applying for teaching jobs in Japan.

Allow me to get into a bitchy, ranty mode for a moment. I’ve been teaching English in Japan for 9 months now – and while that isn’t really much and I know I missed the prime time to come teach in Japan and I know that peiople who’ve done it longer possibly know more about the job than me – I feel the need to shout at people a little.

I have met a lot of really awful teachers here. I don’t mean everyone, of course. There are some teachers that have been here since the beginning of eikaiwa, and are still going strong. There are teachers that had never envisioned themselves to be teachers but just happened to love the job and be good at it, so they stayed on. There are brand new teachers who are making the most of their time and their job here.

Then there are….the others. Similar categories. New teachers but who have some pre-conceived notion of how English should be taught, and rule their students as such. People who actually want to be teachers in the future so have brought their college textbooks with them but don’t actually realise that they lack the personality traits required of a teacher (you know, like compassion and patience).

I’ve been witness to utterly atrocious teacher behaviour towards the students. For example, greeting them as “dickheads” like it was completely normal. Telling them they should give up on learning English because they’re useless. Humiliating them in front of other students.

Those in-front-of-students examples are thankfully quite rare, but the bitching that goes on in the staffroom is a daily event. Insults, personal comments, bitching, horrible written comments on their progress, planned practical jokes, the list goes on. It all adds up to utter contempt, hatred and even latent racism towards the students from some of these teachers. One teacher I know told me that on his reason for resignation, he’ll be adding a 2-page document entitled “All the Things That Are Wrong With Japan”.

Why the f**ker is still here is beyond me.

I can’t understand it myself. These students are just normal people. Also, they’re aren’t just your students, they’re your bloody customers, so show some respect for that reason alone. Personally, I respect them for actually taking the initiative and making the big (especially financially big) decision to learn a new language. They want to learn something new, they want to improve themselves, they want to make new friends, they want to have new experiences. And what the bloody hell is wrong with that? I often wonder, if an eikaiwa system existed in Australia, would I sign up? Probably not, as I’m too lazy. So I admire these students for making the decision.

Maybe I have an advantage over the other teachers. For starters, I’ve been teaching English pretty much all my life to my Eastern European family and friends. I already understand the difficulties associated with learning a new language. I know that elusive dream of being perfectly bilingual and the frustrations that come with it. So maybe I can understand and sympathise better with the students here but that doesn’t mean that people without my experience can’t at least show some bloody manners.

If you want to teach English, then please don’t get arrogant. Don’t think that you know better than the students. Don’t think that you’re better than them as people. And if you catch yourself making fun of the Japanese, then it’s time to go home.

Be patient, be open-minded, be respectful. Three basic rules for teaching in Japan.

There’s a lot of websites about Japan on the web. They all cover different aspects, like focusing on finding jobs, or finding accommodation, travelling or a mix of everything (heh, that would be us).

Because there’s a good portion of foreigners coming to Japan to become English teachers, it would be great to have a website that collects all the websites out there that would be of interest to those people.

Jamie from Japan English Teacher has done just that. His website is a collection of links, under different categories (’Teach in Japan’, ‘JET Programme’, ‘Japan Guide’, ‘Other Resources’ and more) which make it a one-stop place for links of interest to English teachers.

You can also share your stories about teaching English in Japan.

But what is most interesting about this site, is that it offers free job advertising. So companies that didn’t feel they could advertise at other sites due to the fees, can advertise freely at Japan English Teacher. It’s an opportunity to find jobs advertised that you may never have found online before.

It’s also building every day. So check back often for teacher-related material.

Link:
Japan English Teacher

From one of our readers:

I just got back from New York yesterday, where I had an interview with NOVA. I heard about it from a friend of a friend I met in a bar and since then have been pretty gung-ho about the possibility. I have been beelining towards NOVA because it is the one that that guy told me about, and perhaps unwisely neglecting to do too much research past the NOVA site itself. The interview was fine, whatever, and frankly I was surprised at the low quality of the other candidates- they were all just twenty somethings like me, nothing special. The interview itself was subtlely off-putting, and the corporate nature of NOVA began to become apparent as the interviewer rapid fired through the lightning round and refused to move on until she had something to fill the space on her sheet for the semi-unanswerable questions.

Today I decided to poke around for information on the internet, and I have not been very happy. Malevolent rants aside (of which there are a few…) I see a consistent negative opinion of NOVA as being a corporate giant full of malcontented or alchoholic gaijin. While I understand a lot of the experience depends on the luck of where you are placed (I asked for an urban area) and who is around you, I am deeply and genuinely concerned about the recent insurance scandal and the unnecessarily draconian fraternization policy.

Are all the eikawa run this way? Are any of them better than NOVA? I began to look at ECC and, at least just from their website, they look more reputable in terms of how they treat their workers.

Let me be clear, I know NO japanese and not all that much about Japan (although the general knowledge I do have is fairly fleshed out). I didn’t even consider applying for JET because of this, even though the majority of the people I know who are over there did JET and like it. BUT, I really don’t want to sell myself short as an English teacher… I just got a degree in English and have spent years teaching music lessons (a subject more similar to language than you might think…) I was especially dismayed to learn that the Bachelor’s degree is a requirement not of NOVA but of the visa application, essentially showing me that NOVA just wants english speakers and that’s it.

I want to go to Japan for the cultural experience, to learn and to see (and to watch, too :) ) I want to stay there for a year, maybe two. While I may not pursue a career in ESL, I absolutely don’t want to just breeze through the teaching- it’s important to me that students learn! Given my credentials, is NOVA really the best option for me?

Sigh. NOVA. What can you say? I read all the stories about NOVA before I left for Japan too, and while I was a bit sceptical that these were legitimate complaints as opposed to enthusiastic bitching, most of what I’ve heard has been confirmed since I arrived.

Firstly, I think it’s a good thing that you’re thinking about why exactly you want to teach English in Japan. I should warn you that you will be an odd one out. I’ve been studying the foreigners that come to Japan to teach, and it seems like there are three main reasons that they have decided to come to Japan.

1) They have no career prospects and getting a job as an English teacher is easy. You noticed this when you sat the interview. The quality of candidates wasn’t high, but I’d bet good money that all of them are recruited. NOVA in particular is said to be under recruitment quotas so I’m told the interviews are more or less just to check that you don’t dribble when you talk or have Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s sad, but the majority of people here fall under this category. Many of them are bitter and cynical and bitch the most, the “malcontented and alcoholic gaijin” you mentioned, but that is a generalisation. There are also great people from this category. Another point is that you’ll find them in every eikaiwa, not just NOVA.

2) The people that actually want to become teachers. My housemate is one. She came to Japan because it’s an easy way to get teaching experience, especially since in countries like Britain, the rules and laws surrounding working with children make it difficult to get some experience on your resume. It is amazingly easy to get teaching work with children, even with no formal teaching qualifications. It’s also just a fun lifetime experience to be in Japan. They tend to stay here for a couple of years before going home to continue their teaching careers. They are pretty common, but by no means the majority.

3) The people here for fun. I’m one of these and I suspect you are too. These are the people who aren’t thinking about teaching careers, they just want to be in Japan for whatever reason. My reason is the fashion and the anime. But learning the language, or being interested in design are other popular ones. Maybe they’re the round-the-world backpacking type and have now stopped in Japan after trekking in South America. Maybe they’re the kind of people that had highly successful careers at home but got bored and wanted a seachange. These kinds of people are teaching because it’s the easiest job you can get quickly in Japan. They aren’t interested in teaching (not to say that they neglect the job) but the focus is more on being in Japan and the job simply funds their stay. These people seem to be the ones that move on to other jobs or go home in a relatively short space of time (around one year or less). These people are also pretty rare.

I should point out that there are of course the people that came here and were only planning to stay for a year, but ended up staying here for ten! Getting married, having kids, establishing successful careers. They’re hardly foreigners anymore. They’re home now.

I can really only tell you my opinion as a person from the third category. You will have fun in Japan, but you may not have fun at work. Especially now that you have doubts about NOVA, I wouldn’t recommend you going there. All of the eikaiwa have a similar teaching standard, but each eikaiwa’s culture is different. In my experience, I love teaching the students, but I hate being in the staffroom. What you said about different areas and branches is true too, but of course, in the case of NOVA, there are some things that remain the same, like the anti-fraternization policy and the legal hiccups.

NOVA hire as many English teachers as AEON, GEOS and ECC put together. It’s big. The majority of teachers that you’ll meet are NOVA teachers. Keep in mind though, that the English teaching scene is changing. Stories that you may have heard from people who taught in Japan years ago may not necessarily hold true today.

But I’m getting philosophical…

Is NOVA a crappy company to work for? All signs point to yes. But depending on who you are and what you want from your time in Japan, it may not matter. Are other eikaiwa better to work for than NOVA? Again, signs point to yes. But I’m told there are some aspects where NOVA have been more flexible with their staff, for example, the ability to change branches, swap or change shift schedules and so on. I can’t really vouch for the accuracy.

Don’t worry about your lack of Japanese. Any eikaiwa will take you, even the small ones. It’ll make your life a little rocky but every foreigner in Japan has that issue. And especially since you asked to live in an urban area, you’ll get by.

It’s great that you want your students to learn and not just pissfart about but you’ll find some students that aren’t really there to learn English. Their reasons may range from being-there-because-their-mother-said-so to wanting-to-marry-a-gaijin-man. So keep this in mind when you teach.

I guess my best recommendation is: hell yeah, come to Japan, you’ll have a grand time. The easiest way to get here is by working for an eikaiwa (on a side note, none of them require bachelors degrees, it’s all only for the visa) and the easiest eikaiwa to get into is NOVA. If you don’t like them, you can always move on once you get settled. Or, you can save yourself some grief by working at another eikaiwa (if you ask for a recommendation, I’d say AEON).

If you do end up working for NOVA, don’t let it ruin your stay in Japan. There are plenty of options open to you once you have the visa and are in the country. The one thing I wouldn’t recommend doing is accepting NOVA’s accomodation, no matter how much they insist. It’ll be more work on your part to find a place to stay, but you’ll save more money that way.

Sigh, this isn’t even a quarter of my views on the subject, but it’ll do for now, I hope :)

I have a useful link for you. While I haven’t actually been asked questions like this too often by students at my eikaiwa, some teachers have had private students ask these. Either way, it helps to know exactly what to say if the question “What’s the difference between saying ‘every day’ and ‘everyday’?” pops up.

While you might be able to answer it, if you’re like me, you’ll tend to explain things the long way round, which may sometimes cause more problems than you had to begin with. So, keep this link in your bookmarks, read through it once of twice. It may just help you out in a tight spot.

Learn English is actually a German website designed for German students, but still readable.

Link:
Common Mistakes in English – learnenglish.de

While you teach students, you’ll have many occassions where you have to correct a student that says something like:

“I see my favorite television show after school”

“That’s good“, you say, full of genkiness, “but in English, we say ‘I watch television’”

“Ah sousousousousousousou. But why ‘watch’ and not ’see’? What does it mean?”

“Errr, well…..”

It’s a very difficult thing to explain, especially to low level students, and you may be tempted to just yell “IT JUST IS!” but before you do that (and get fired), try this instead:

When you see things, you are aware of what is happening around you, using your eyes.

For example, I can see a cat there.

When you watch things, you are absorbing what you see. ‘See’ is more passive than ‘watch’. You also watch something for a longer period of time than you would see something, particularly if it is something that is constantly moving or changing, like a TV show or a movie.

For example, I watch my favorite TV show everyday.

Perhaps for very low-level students, it’s best to use time as a reason. If it’s something that goes for a long time, like a TV show, the use watch. If it’s something that’s quite short, like, ‘I can see a cat there’, then it’s see.

That tactic may fall over almost immediately but it’s a quick method to placate a low-level student for something that is far too difficult for them to understand.

You can use the past tense (saw, watched) in much the same way. Until the example of “I saw a movie on the weekend comes up”.

“Why don’t you say ‘I watched a movie on the weekend’?” asks your befuddled student.

“Ah well, you can indeed say ‘I watched a movie on the weekend’ and you would be correct!”

“Yes, but why do some English people say “I saw a movie on the weekend’?”

“IT JUST IS!”

Mums and Dads around Japan are signing their kids up for English classes faster than they can be provided. It may be seem to be smart thinking to get your kids started on English as soon as possible, but I really wonder if that’s necessary when the child is only two years old and barely speaks anything, let alone English.

Yes that’s right, TWO YEARS OLD. That means that kids classes are often interjected with bouts of nappy-changing and vomiting. And that’s just for the toddlers. The older ones are just like kids anywhere else in the world. They run around, they scream, they hit each other for no apparent reason, they cry, they wet themselves.

Somewhere in all that, comes the actual education, even though most of us instructors are not formally qualified (besides the mandatory eikaiwa training, which can range from 8 hours to 3 days).

Most kids classes are about songs and games, which is meant to be some sort of “learning through fun” technique. The kids are encouraged to sing along or repeat what the instructors says. There are usually worksheets and report cards, but they don’t seem to mean much.

The main idea of kids classes, particularly for young kids, is to simply expose them to the language. It’s at this age when they can pick up new languages with no troubles at all. I question how useful the kids classes at eikaiwa though. Once a week for an hour doesn’t seem like enough “exposure”, especially if they speak Japanese for 70% of the lesson and completely forget what they learnt the moment the step out the door.

From what I hear from students, English is compulsory curriculum now in Japanese primary schools anyway. So these kids classes are really just a complementary add-on to what the schools are teaching…except it costs a lot more.

If you do teach kids, either at an eikaiwa or at a private school, you have to be able to tolerate kids. For those that can’t (or, like me, are borderline), take solace in the fact that the classes generally don’t go on for longer than an hour.

I’d also recommend drawing small cats or monsters instead of the smiley faces generally awarded for good work. They’ll love it and always remember you for it.

Even though I’ll be an eikaiwa sensei (conversation teacher) I’ll still be making use of a textbook supplied by the eikaiwa company in my lessons. Textbooks can be a great way to supplement your lesson, but don’t feel the need to bring huge books of your own from home. Apart from the fact that they’re heavy, pretty much everything you’ll need is already in Japan, and provided by your eikaiwa.

Firstly, these textbooks aren’t standard textbooks. They’re designed to stimulate conversation, being primarily made up of pictures and lines of conversation. The textbooks give a starting point to create roleplays, to walk the students through typical conversations, and lets them practise their vocabulary by describing pictures and scenarios. They are NOT designed to teach English grammar, because this is taught extensively in schools and universities. The conversation classes are designed to put into vocal practice what the students have learned throught their education. The textbooks supplied by eikaiwa (both prescribed and others) supplement this.

In fact, the only English grammar textbook you may need is for yourself! It’s not uncommon for a Japanese student to correct their native-speaking teacher on points of grammar. That’s how high the emphasis is in schools. Still, eikaiwa will often have grammar textbooks in their resource libraries so there’s no need to bring your own from home, but it is recommended to brush up on grammar before you leave.

If you tutor or if you don’t work for an eikaiwa, standard textbooks from home probably won’t help you teach. What you may want to consider bringing are items like photo albums, scrapbooks, magazines – even take-away menus from your local restaurants. Items with images or clearly ordered information are much more interesting for your student to look at and learn from, and like the eikaiwa designed textbooks, can be used to stimulate conversation and roleplays.