James McCrostie is a full-time university lecturer and part-time writer. He writes mainly about labor issues related to the English-teaching industry.
For James McCrostie's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
With schools well into their final term and the university academic year already winding down it's time to reflect on the most significant events in Japanese education this past year.
“Predatory conference” organizers now stalk Japan’s groves of academe, preying on unsuspecting researchers. These conferences are inferior events that contribute little to the field of academic knowledge but generate plenty of revenue for organizers’ bank accounts. Academics, some simply naive but others willingly participating, ...
The first sign that Olivia's Gaba lesson would be anything but ordinary came when her student insisted during the warmup that he didn't like wearing clothes. The middle-aged gentleman had previously studied English with Olivia while wearing the shortest of shorts. On this winter day ...
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 teachers, ...
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. 27 ...
The past year has been anything but business as usual for the financial industry. Faced with a frosty economic climate, financial service companies have been busy chopping dead wood. Last year, 200,000 financial service jobs ended up on the cutting block worldwide. In Japan, that ...
They're back. Worries that foreign students would abandon Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and accompanying fiasco at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have proven to be largely unfounded. According to Ministry of Justice figures, 70,170 foreign students left Japan between March ...
Crawling in and out of graves isn't everyone's idea of a good time. For those willing to give it a try, though, Yoshimi Hyakuana in Saitama Prefecture makes for an interesting day trip out of Tokyo. Literally meaning, "100 holes of Yoshimi," the Yoshimi Hyakuana ...
Long accustomed to being ignored, being forgotten proved too much to take for unionized teachers at Gaba language school. On Oct. 4, the General Union registered an official complaint and request for an investigation with the Ministry of Finance's Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission ...
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 talks ...
