Casualties of the Kid's Eikaiwa War
Two companies that ran a nationwide business sending English teachers to students' homes have gone bankrupt. Aube Education System, based in Saitama City, and Tokyo-based Educare System, which pamphlets describe as group companies, filed for bankruptcy at the Tokyo District Court on October 28 with combined debts of around ¥4.8 billion. They jointly ran the "Bing Bang Boom Club Kodomo Eikaiwa" service which, as of August this year, was sending teachers to about 21,000 homes. The companies are said to be very unlikely to be able to return about ¥800 million in tuition fees that some 4,300 customers paid for three years' tuition in advance. Another ¥110 million in outstanding payments is due to around 2,700 teachers, who only found out about the situation when notified by the court. Aube was established in 1995 and ran businesses in 16 prefectures. Educare was set up in 2001 and had operations in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. Their eikaiwa service sent Japanese teachers of English to the homes of children aged from infancy to first grade, who generally took four 45-minute lessons a month. Parents paid on average ¥360,000 for three years.
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Trick or Treating
Halloween celebrations seem to becoming more of a regular occurence in Japan. While the majority of Japanese adults or teenagers have never been to a Halloween party or enjoyed trick or treating, younger children are far more likely to have taken part in a Halloween event. Most Japanese may not know about the Celtic roots of the festival, but they are familiar with the pumpkins and witches that give it its commercial appeal, an appeal that is being exploited by English conversation schools across the country. For example, a group of eikaiwa schools in the Kobe-Hanshin area got together on Saturday to organize a trick or treat parade for about 80 of their young students in a shopping street in Kobe. They dressed up as witches and ghosts and went from store to store.
Article in Japanese
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November 02, 2005