So my company went bankrupt...

The past few months has been hectic with the impending implosion of my company, the largest English school in Japan. I've been to protests when our bosses' and the Japanese staff's pay started being delivered late, and finally ended up getting no pay for over fifteen days which would have gone on indefinitely had it not been for the board of directors having an emergency usurping of our hapless president.

He has mismanaged the company for over a decade and has been MIA for at least a few weeks, most likely already living off the company's profits in some tax haven with anti-extradition laws. It was nice for some of the snakes in the upper management to at least do the decent thing (for once) and declare bankruptcy.

So now I'm on two weeks unpaid vacation (job hunting all the while), but the good news is I got my visa extension (barely) before the company collapsed and it is being processed. Hopefully my company being bankrupt won't throw any wrench into the processing (which supposedly won't matter since I began the process before it all hit the fan).

So in other news, our apartment owner seems keen on letting us just take over the lease from our company, which is good except that we have no jobs and income, so we're basically trying to stall for time. Supposedly our contract is safe for at least another month, if you believe what our company says, so we shouldn't be kicked to the streets anytime soon.

Still, it will be nice if one of the better jobs I've applied for hires me. It is a difficult situation because the market is quite glutted and this leaves very little room for a guy to get a job teaching English. Were I female, I'd have another job already, but it isn't as bad as my Asian roommate has it, who basically can't even get past the bare minimum screening.

Apparently English teachers should have a "look" that is "exotic and foreign", which in this neck of the woods means non-Asian. Gambatte, Eddie-kun!

Eddie is my roommate, by the way. We get along swell, are great friends, and very compatible at living together; don't get on each others nerves. Hopefully we can both get jobs soon and then we'll be set to continue our Japanese adventure. Our Japaventure!

In other news, my host family is still taking me to festivals and whatnot and in fact I'm going to their son's birthday party tomorrow. Hopefully I'll still be around to see their daughter's first-born come February!

I might finally have some time to make up for the lack of posts on this blog. There's plenty of interesting things to tell folks about, and I hope I can remember even half of it.

Till next time,
"Will Teach English for Beer".