Part 2: Nova 1996 Revisited – Nova Instructors and other Animals

17 comments

1. Thanks for posting. I love this kind of view to the past.

2. Love the “rogues gallery.” Remembering some of the screwups I worked with, I used to wonder what it would take to get fired from a company like that. Now I know!😱

   One teacher I worked with got a student pregnant but he quit before he was fired. He tried to stick it out with her but was back in his home country by the time the baby was born.

   Man, the Nova Chronicles…

3. Joined in Feb.96… maybe I will add some recollections and stories. A quick one: one day our Japanese branch manager disappeared. Just.. disappeared. Didn’t show up for the early shift as scheduled. When his home was contacted his mother was confused and said he had left in a suit as normal that morning, on time. Never heard from again, but apparently it was a planned disappearance.

4. I’d love to hear about Wild Bill.

5. There were a lot of punks on a lark at Nova. And who can blame there – young people straight out of university on what was basically a working holiday. But for all these kinds of people, there were some who took the job seriously and were regarded as good teachers. They were settled in Japan with families, etc. It was these people who I felt sorry for when Nova went under. I heard some tried to go it alone by opening their own school and were pretty successful. But the majority probably with left Japan or became ALTs.

6. Love it! Looking forward to some more

7. Nova actually did have a ton of characters.

   I worked with some people from ECC and they all seemed fake, basically (AEON people were brainwashed).

   From Kansai area, we had a few classics.
   There was some guy who got put in Nishi Umeda but had terrible attendance his first month – literally absent or late every day, and then getting complaints on top. After one month basically the company fired him and gave him two months salary to go away.

   There was a guy at I think Ashiya or Okamoto who had banged two students and actually got one of them pregnant. They realized this in the middle of voice and started a fight.

   There was one guy whose name shall not be named in south Osaka (I think Kongo). He banged anything that moved and would take photos of IDs and stuff (and show them to people). He harrassed the staff so much they got him banned from the branch and transferred to MM Center. MM Center needed to send someone to branch to cover and sent him (to the same branch he got banned from). He eventually got fired because of all the absences and complaints.

   Not staff but student related – there was some crazy student in south Osaka who would not quite get into arguments with staff but like make hour long complaints. They didn’t have approval to refund his money so basically all the branches in the area had his photo and memos of how to deal with him. Apparently the cops got called on him in 2007 in I think Sakai Higashi.

8. What about the hordes of charisma man Nova teachers who slept with their students? 🤣🤣🤣

9. Gross… But a lot of creepers, racists and incompetents are now managers at ‘new’ Nova. Ha

10. > After the Nova bankruptcy, this kind of predatory business practice was basically outlawed.

    I’m a rogue here but IMO it was unfair that they were pretty much shutdown by complaints about this. Lotsa places charge a $$$ fee for a service, knowing that most will lose interest.

    My recollection is that part of the problem was that people couldn’t access all their lessons due to scheduling issues. However I still reckon there’s some sorta onus on consumers to do their own figuring on whether they’ll use 600 lessons in 3 years. Assuming you’re not using them all for privates, that’s roughly 4 lessons a week. It’s not that hard to say ‘thanks but I doubt I’m gonna attend 4 lessons a week over the next 3 years’.

    Notably, people would burn points on private lessons when their points were about to run out. Like gyms… everybody dreams of getting jacked and training 6 days a week with a $$$ PT when signing up. In reality, they end up attending every so often without a PT. That’s why I don’t join gyms.

11. Don’t forget in the old old days there was no problem with teachers and students hanging out after work. Many teachers students and staff dated each other. It all stopped after an instructor got an under aged girl pregnant in some other part of Japan.

    My head teacher must’ve been an alcoholic. He deliberately scheduled a free lesson for me at the beginning of every shift. It was for me to cover his lesson if he couldn’t get to work on time. I didn’t mind since it meant I got some free time if he did show up (luckily at Nova we get paid whether there is a student or not).

    Then there was a different teacher who was an alcoholic and used to go on the balcony between classes and drink from his pet bottle filled with booze (fired of course when it was discovered)

    I remember the idiot teacher who put up posters in the school advertising his private lessons (fired)

    My favorite perhaps was the teacher who was banging a student who turned out to be the wife of a yakuza. A couple of them showed up at school looking for him. Fortunately for him he wasn’t there, and after being told what had happened over the phone, he quit then and there and left the country

12. >Stalker: A guy was fired for following a female student home. He later became an ALT.

    lol

13. As somebody who worked close to the top…..my number was 6. I knew Monkey bridge pretty well (as well as Andres the swede) thus got hired as employee 6.

    I have seen everything that happened though out my time there.

    1) A nice kind teacher from Canada was going to get fired due to being stalked by a student. He did the smart thing and asked his Head teacher to walk home with him which caught out the student. There was a revolt in the branch with the teachers and staff walking out. That saved him and it was an embarrassment to the company because they should have supported him in the first place.

    2) In Mie, there was a teacher who sexually abused students. Branch was closed down for some time and teacher sent home. Total mess up and every level.

    3) There was a scandal in Nara concerning an older teacher who was having sex with older ladies in and out of the school. Ladies found out and fight started in Voice room. Teacher was later fired (I was sent in the clean up the branch)

    Lots of stories

14. I only worked at Nova post-rebirth. Maybe from 2011-2017ish in the Tokyo area. It wasn’t that wild iirc. But it was easy. Smoking every interval and draining the coffee machine. Haha.

15. when i was there (2016-17) i apparently just missed a character. his final shenanigan was drunkenly trying to slide across the hood of a cop car, then when he had no one to call, nova bailed him out and promptly fired him.

16. Not 90s but here are my greatest hits from working 2015-2018ish. All in the Kanagawa area.

    – An American and Canadian who worked in the sagamiono branch. They also worked at the Isehara branch (rural city). They organized a foursome with two 16 year olds at Isehara. During it they got jealous and started to fight each other. The American got married, quit and went back to cali. Comes back regularly. The Canadian got fired for another reason and moved to Saitama. He’s now a very popular YouTuber in Japan.

    – The same American got a job for his high school friend from cali. Raped her one night in Japan. She broke down and told a creepy Australian teacher about it. He then proceeds to rape her. She loses her mind and heads back to America like a day later.

    – an old British dude that had been at nova since the 90s had an accident and broke his leg. After using up his paid days off they told him he’ll be getting fired unless he returned. Came to work limping terribly and just kept walking at a snail pace. Don’t know if he recovered since I left.

    – another old timer, like proper old timer (his ID number was double digits) just dropped dead in a middle of a class at a Kawasaki branch. Heart attack and that was that.

    – another teacher was having sex with all the women around kanto, at nova and outside. Definitely in the 100s. He had sex with 5 staff just before he left and they all found out. It was funny because apparently they got into an argument but one of the staff members didn’t care and knew about the others. He wrote a book about how to have sex in Japan last year that seems successful.

    – the Australian creep from above….countless stories from the 3 years I was there and that was just my period. He’s been there over 20 years. His favorite period was April when the new staff would come in and he could prey on them. They were polite to him since he was older and they new but it took them about a week to work out the deal. But every once in a while he’d get one. He was super possessive and would stalk staff. He’d also come into work on his days off and wait for the staff to finish. Honestly, it’s guys like him that make me think some foreigners here have max stat evade. Get up to all sorts for years without any repercussions whilst others are one and done.

    – slurpy slurps. One female student in her 40s would inaugurate new teachers by slurping on their noodle the first lesson she took with them. It was funny because a new teacher would come out of their man to man lesson with her smiling and excited and then get shocked when he found out everyone else got the same treatment. She finally found her sucka teacher, some early 20s American from the boonies and they got married. Last I heard he was pretty much not allowed to leave home whatsoever.

    – a really weird teacher and the only person I ever saw get let go (no renewal) for just being a shit teacher. Everyone else I saw was for some fuck up. The weird teacher was cleanly dressed, shaven, never late, but just couldn’t get students. He spent the whole year handing out tissues. Anyway he got a job in China and a few months after, another teacher that’d added him on fb found a post like:

    “I’ll have my revenge NOVA. You took away everything from me….my japan….mark my words, I will be back and you will suffer”

    …glad I got out before this.

    And according to the managers, Kanagawa was one of the tamer regions. I’ve got other stories I might post later.

17. Damn. I almost worked at Nova in Tokyo in 2002 – looks like I missed out on some crazy stuff lol