Part One of my trip down Memory Lane will cover Nova's working conditions in 1996. Part Two is called; 'Nova Instructors and other animals' and will cover the scandals and juicy stuff. Stay tuned.
I first heard about Nova when an acquaintance came back from Japan with more than a million yen in cash after 12 months. As he was a hard drinker and traveled around SE Asia – it seemed like a good deal.
I applied to Nova, not really knowing anything about Japan. I remember the interviewer asking if I was interested in going to the Kanto area. I replied, 'What is Kanto?' I got offered a job anyway.
The paperwork and visas were handled efficiently from what I remember. Nova had deals with airlines at that time and offered discounted airfares. They were sending large groups of 'senseis' a couple of times a month so were an attractive client for the airlines I guess.
Airport Pick-up: Flights with Nova people arrived from the US, US, and Australia arrived on the same day. We were greeted by Peter M and a woman with a crumpled blouse and tight mini-skirt (she looked like she had been out for a night in Roppongi). Peter M was mostly focused on seeing if anyone had any newspapers from the plane. The guy in charge of taking us to our apartments in a mini-bus was there too. This was pre-Internet so we didn't realize that paying 6,000 yen for a 70-minute ride to our apartments wasn't a rip-off. One guy wasn't impressed when he was told to get his bicycle sent via a delivery company because the mini-bus was full. Nova later covered the transport expense after complaints.
Salary: The basic salary was 257,000 yen. But you got paid 5,000 yen for each late shift ( from 1:20 PM) and 10,000 for each Sunday on a monthly basis. Most people worked three late shifts and Sundays so the salary was 282,000 yen to start.
Promotions: Assistant Trainers were paid 10,000 yen more. Trainers were paid 15,000 yen more.
Pay Raises: You either got 5,000, 10,000, or 15,000 each year. I was given 10,000 or 15,000 yen for the first 5 or 6 years. After that that they started reducing raises.
Perks: I heard before I joined Nova that branches offered coffee and Japan Times newspapers in the 'Voice Room'. Also, on Christmas Eve each school received a cake/cakes from the head office. There used to be end-of-year parties in Shinjuku for those who helped with the cleaning of branches. Gaijins were eventually banned because some of them were hitting on the female staff.
Deductions: Nova offered their JMA health insurance for 6,000 yen a month. No pensions were offered. I was lucky in that after I left Nova I was able to pay back most of the missing pension contributions when they had a 10-year back payment scheme.
Overtime: The rate was a fixed 2,300 for 40 or 45-minute lessons. The school managers could decide about OT so often they opened up overtime schedules when they weren't really justified. Each school had bunches of faxed notices from different branches offering OT so you could choose where you wanted to work. I did OT most weeks as I had one shared day off with my gf so was free the other day. I probably worked at over 50 branches. I used to roll up and do my favorite lessons on auto-pilot.
Savings: Every month I sent fairly large amounts of money back to my home country for investments. Flights were cheaper back then and I did some travelling every year. Return flights to Europe were 70,000 yen. Flights to the US and Australia were cheaper still. So, even if I paid for a flight I could still send back 100,000 yen or whatever that month.
Staff: I was told by several different people that at the time Nova was 'officially' one of the best places for females to work for as they could raise through the ranks faster than at most companies in Japan. Most of the staff were pretty good. Although, the quality of the staff seemed to decline year-on-year…
by Professional_Bat_831