Distances

L>R: Takeshi, some guy, Yasu

I just woke up from a 14-hour sleep.

I went to Nagoya with Yasu over the weekend to visit Takeshi, a mate who moved there because of work a few months ago.

Yasu drove and it took us about 3 1/2 hours with breaks.
His car has a navigation system (as well as a small radar on his rear-view to show nearby useful things) that simply needed us to punch in Takeshi's address and it did all the work. And yet it never shut up. Every few minutes it was announcing anything from a new area we were entering to the turn-offs we weren't taking. This was on top of the actual directions it was giving.

We left a bit after 8pm and got there around 2am-ish. Ended up finding some space at one end of Takeshi's smaller-than-my-room room a few hours later.

Takeshi took us to Nagoya Castle and he had a friend who guided us around to what was worthwhile.

It was an awesome weekend. The only downside was coming home again. Takeshi's heading back to Aus for another month or so for a holiday over Christmas and should be back before I myself am heading there. He'll be heading down to Kobe to catch up on some drinking before I go (and he'd better).

The Day After

Nagoya-based G.communication Group will begin offering lessons at 30 Nova branches from next week, in the first stage of a plan to take over operations at 200 branches of the failed English-language school chain over the coming year, it was learned Wednesday.

G.communication will reopen the schools using the established Nova brand name and also plans to employ administrative staff and foreign teachers formerly employed by Nova.

G.communication, which operates language schools, restaurant chains and other businesses, was selected by preservative administrators of Nova Corp. to act as a sponsor company for operations of the firm.

G.communication's wholly owned subsidiary, G.education Co., which operates cram schools, will undertake the operation of the former Nova schools.

During an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun in Nagoya, Masaki Inayoshi, 38, chairman and president of G.communication Co., said the firm would offer explanatory briefings and interviews at venues across the nation on Friday and Saturday for former Nova employees and foreign teachers seeking reemployment.

The reopening of 30 schools precedes G.communication's planned resumption of operations at 200 Nova schools, in stages, over a six-month to one year period.

Inayoshi indicated the firm would employ about 2,000 teachers and about 500 administrative staff under this plan.

The firm will abolish the system under which students paid tuition fees to Nova in advance, introducing instead a system in which students pay fees on a monthly basis.

The 30 schools G.communication has selected to reopen next week are all branches where Nova had offered lessons for both children and adults.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071109TDY02306.htm


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On a side note, I had cake. And it was good. :O

Tomorrow

Another good read.

Tomorrow is supposedly the day we hear if Nova is successful in finding a sponsor. Would make for an interesting birthday present however the result turns out.