Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
The four-year legal battle between management and teachers at Berlitz Japan was declared over Thursday as both sides signed an agreement to end the company’s lawsuit against union officials. Claiming an 11-month strike by unionized teachers to be illegal, Berlitz Japan had sued five ...
A recipe for ‘Hashism’? Re: “How did we end up here, in ‘Hashimotopia,’ 2022?” by Christopher Robinson and Ben Stubbings (Light Gist, Aug. 28): I believe that (Osaka Mayor) Toru Hashimoto’s flip-flops are part of an ingenious political strategy. Hashimoto claimed to be opposed ...
Before instructors became embroiled in a fierce legal battle with Berlitz Japan, there was a time when the English language school chain’s robust image made it a top choice among foreign job-seekers. In particular, it was the company’s good reputation over competing language chains ...
“Sensei, Japan is such a safe country because there are no strikes. Right?” A student at the university where I teach blindsided me with this remark the other day. The vast majority of Japanese under 30 have never even witnessed industrial action and imagine ...
Now fraught with job insecurity and low pay, there was a time when the work was steady and salaries were high for those who taught English in Japan. One only has to contrast the birth of the eikaiwa (English conversation) business in the late ...
After hearing more than three years of testimony, the judge took only a minute to read the court’s verdict rejecting Berlitz Japan’s ¥110 million lawsuit against striking teachers and their union and reaffirming organized labor’s right to take industrial action. According to the Feb. ...
After 20 months of legal wrangling, neither side has managed to snag a win in Berlitz Japan’s ¥110 million lawsuit against five teachers and their union, Begunto. On the recommendation of the case’s lead judge, the company and union have been in court-mediated reconciliation ...
After the second court hearing on April 20 in Berlitz Japan’s lawsuit against unionized teachers, the legal fight seems bogged down in a form of trench warfare. In December, after a year of strike action by over 100 teachers, the company filed a lawsuit ...
It has been 14 months since members of the Berlitz General Union Tokyo (Begunto) first downed chalk and launched rotating strikes against the language school Berlitz Japan. The strike has grown into the longest and largest sustained strike by language teachers in Japan. While ...
As union representative for Berlitz General Union Tokyo (Begunto), let me set the record straight. Despite scabs, naysayers and second-guessing pundits in the English-language media, Berlitz teachers are making history. With more than 100 teachers striking at dozens of schools around the Kanto region ...
Question: How do you get to be on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires? You might inherit your wealth, take risks and get lucky, or work for it. For Soichiro Fukutake, owner of Berlitz’s parent company Benesse, it’s a case of “all the ...
Too big, too fast, and with too little quality — that’s the consensus view of many industry analysts on former language-school market leader Nova Corp., whose collapse left over 420,000 students and 4,000 non-Japanese instructors without an “eikaiwa” home. The Nova affair has already ...
