(TAPE 9) Nicola Interview Oct 19, 1989
(Includes: Leases, Net Worth)
SIDE A
(Counter 000)
(LEASES. COST OF SETTING UP SHOP)
(note: US$1.00=100 yen. 30 tsubo = 100 square meters approx.)
A:…Everything has gone crazy around her. And 4 million per tsubo is not a lot of money when you now consider that the land that this building is on is now worth 100 million yen a tsubo.
Q: That’s the rent. 4 million per tsubo.
A: No, 4 million yen is guaranteed money. Deposit money. Nihon-go is “Hosho-kin.” 4 million yen per tsubo is what you need to pay the landlord …the old chinese expression was “key money.”…Okay, this is called “hoshokin”. There’s a difference between “hoshokin” and “key money.,” And that enables you to make an agreement with the landlord to rent this place.
Q: How big is this place?
A: 85 tsubo. So if you multiply 85 times 4 million you’re talking about 320 plus…350 million yen. That’s the hoshokin. Now the difference between hoshokin and kenri kin. (right money)…kenri kin means you have the ownership rights of the place and you have the right to re-lease it to somebody at whatever the market bears. That’s what key money is…..The right to use the place. And the right to re-lease it to anybody you want….How do you say it…I got key money over here and I paid 400 million yen key money. You come along and you want the place and I say I want 600 million. You pay me 600 million and the rental agreement that I got stays with you. You can transfer the rental agreement. That’s key money. But now maybe the economy is bad and I paid 400 million for it. You come along and I say “Give me 100 million.” So the key money is a risk. If the economy goes up your asset is worth more. If the economy goes down, your asset goes down.
Q: So what would you say now?
A: The kenri-kin could be more than 4 million per tsubo. Let’s say 4 million per tsubo. No. No. Gomensai. I’m talking about Hoshokin. I shouldn’t say Kenri-kin. They don’t have kenri-kin here. Kenri-kin.
Q: There’s no key money here.
A: There’s no key money. It’s only deposit. I get it back. After ten years I get 10% a year back.
Q: Shit that’s great.
A: No, that’s zero. In other words, they never really pay you back. Because they put the money in a bank account that makes 10% interest a year. So one tsubo. They put 4 million yen in the bank for a year, they get 10% interest. So at the end of ten years, that money becomes Jesus…doubles. It goes up 150% right. There’s a rule . 7 & 10. 10 & 7.If you put money in the bank at 10% at year, in 7 years, the money doubles. If you put money in the bank at 7% a year, it takes 10 years for the money to double. So if they put money in…and this is a bank…Hang sheng bank…their own bank…and they get 10% a year, …that means the 4 million yen I give them is already worth 8. Now, at the end of 10 years, they pay me back and 400,000 yen per tsubo per year.
Q: You divide 72 by the interest rate. And the answer is the no. of years it takes you to double your money.
(more meaningless discussion on doubling your money)
A: But anyway the thing is now at the end of ten years they will pay you back at 10% per year. And it takes them ten years to pay you back. To show you the difference …or the economy…it’s a very bad deal…Now in this particular case, my hoshokin was 28 million yen. Or 23 million yen or something like that. It was 280,000 a tsubo. So I think it’s 23 million yen. Now had I paid “hoshokin” they would have paid me back 23 million yen over a ten-year period which means I still didn’t’ get my money back. But now the hoshokin went from 280,000 yen a tsubo to 4
Q: So what do you need the other money for?
A: Now, you take the place and it’s bare. Like my contract says I got to bring this place down to zero. How about that. That means I got to take the ceilings out. I got to take the walls down. I gotta take the brick down. I gotta bring it back down to a concrete floor. And I have to pay for that. In this particular case, it’s back to an office. That’s why we leave these lights here.These come with the building. So they’re in there. So that means I gotta take all the other lights down and I gotta fix it up. And they may tell me to take this out. Cuz this wasn’t here. This heavy piece of wood. So I gotta bring it down. And they got me by the balls because they got 10 million yen of my money. So if I don’t do it, they take the ten million yen and they say it cost ten million yen to bring this thing back to its original place.
So now, you come in here. You gotta decorate it. And if you see the chair you’re sitting on that’s about an 85,000 yen chair. So if you count, just the chairs in this room, that’s already 4 million yen. 5 million yen maybe. Anyway, so…normal construction…like this guy over here, sitting to my right sitting and talking to my wife, I wanna just do a little thing, I want to put some imitation marble on the floor, this that and the other…he wants 8 million yen. That’s a 100,000 yen a tsubo for small work. And he’s not doing the whole place. He’s not even touching this room. So I’d say, to give you a better idea or, I took a place in Omori—it’s the Tokyu Stores. It’s the Prima Hotel. And I took it in a bare condition, which means concrete. Construction, concrete. Cost me 1, 800,000 yen to decorate it (i.e. per tsubo) . That’s 5 years ago.
Q: Jesus Christ. So we’re talking about 2.5 million a tsubo today.
A: Maybe. Maybe more. ..And you can go see my store. 10 tsubo. Cost me 18 million yen. That particular store cost me 3 million yen a tsubo “Hoshokin.” That’s 5 years ago. Today, I hate to think of the numbers. That’s before the big rise. So I’d say in this place, you’d need at least 100 million to decorate. For 80 tsubo. So now you’re talking about 500,000,000 yen. Then you gotta get your labor. Then you gotta get your advertising. Then the rent here is approximately 3 million yen a month. So how many months will you lose money? Me, I here now, I’m losing an average of 4 or 5 million a month. I can’t reverse it unless I jump deeper into the water.
So I’d say, I was telling these guys (i.e.prospective buyers) you gotta have about 700,000,000 yen to take a place like this from the landlord. From me, they can walk in any time and make a deal. So that’s the value of the location in Roppongi today. It’s very close to 8 million yen per tsubo.
Q: OK. That’s a lot of fucking money. 700,000,000. That’s 350 mill for the deposit.
A: About 400 million for the deposit. 100 million to fix it up. That’s 500 million. Advertising, the loss of business, you will lose money in the beginning. Unless you’re Jesus Christ and nobody here is named Jesus Christ. I’d said it’s gonna cost you…Operating Capital you’d better have about 100 million to 200 million. Operating capital.. Cuz you’re talking money here. And if you put ads in the paper, they’re not cheap. Remember this guy from the Herald Tribune….remember what he was saying? It cost 100,000 yen for one insertion. And he does it everyday in the Japan Times. And that’s a little fucking thing. That’s not a big newspaper. So that’s 3 million yen a month. And that’s only one form. Hell, I got a lot of advertisement out. I don’t think anybody reads it. I was even on tv advertising. Jesus. TV advertising. 10 seconds. They want something like 2 million yen a month. For 10 seconds. That’s a lot of money.
Q: That’s everyday of the month. Or every other day.
A: Maybe. I don’t know. But I know it’s two million yen per month for 10 seconds. And that was Channel 12 (TV Tokyo) which is considered a low channel. But you know what is the cost of the Olympics Coverage per second. Astronomical.
Mr. Cromartie don’t have 700,000,000 million yen (to open a restaurant here). In don’t care who he is.
Q: How much is that in dollars.
A: About 6 million dollars. He hasn’t even earned that much since he’s been playing ball.
(discussion of Cromartie’s income and expenses)
A: Anyway, that’s the kind of money you need. And then you gotta realize that your earning capacity of the money invested, now if you take that money and you put it any place else in the world, and, if you talk, let’s say we’re talking 5 million dollars, and if you get 10% a year, you get $500,000 a year without breaking your ass or worrying. You can’t make $500,000 a year in this restaurant. It’s impossible. You might be able to gross $500,000 a year. Big companies. People buy stock. I don’t know why. They don’t even make 1% a year on their investment. But they’ve bullshitted with the numbers that the stock market issues and the advertisment that the stock markets got. They’re more on the news than the baseball games.
So I told that to Cromartie’s manager. I says, “Come on. You got this kind of money. You leave it with you. You gotta make more. Even if you make 5% a year, you’re making more than Warren can make. Here in Japan.
Q: How old is this guy?
A: Oh, he’s in the 40’s. Low 40’s. He’s no hotshot operator. He doesn’t have the gift of gab. Most of those guys are good talkers. This guy doesn’t talk much, but I guess it’s because he’s dealing with Cromartie. You talk too much to Cromartie, he’ll get annoyed. Cuz he can’t answer back in a certain language. The more you say the dumber he feels he is. Or the dumber he recognizes that he is. And that would automatically start black and white and all that other shit to protect himself.
In Yokota, just to show you, we paid about a million yen a tsubo, just to build the place. That was 140 million yen….
But it grosses an average of let’s say, easy numbers, 18 million yen a month, and each month it will make about 8 million yen.
(noise)
My wife says “Let’s sell everything.”
Nobody’s gonna give you anything.
You’re better off by letting place survive. And let the other 4 disappear. But I don’t know. It’s very hard. Like I told you, once you stay in this country like me…I’ve been here so fucking long. I think Japanese. I’m a workaholic. Or is anybody who reaches my age…don’t wanna quit….Of course, salaried people who work for the government, they have to quit. They have no choice. They know that day is coming. My employee N omura? He’s waiting to reach the age of 60 so he can retire….You can’t retire. You’re finished. I can retire. I’m finished. But a salaried man, he can retire. A baseball player is forced to retire. He has to produce, but a person like you, if you don’t write a book or if you take a year to write a book, what’s the difference if you take five years to write the book. If you can eat between that time.
Q:That’s one reason why I chose this profession because you can keep doing it when you’re 70. 75. 80. Keep learning new things.
A: You see this guy, Larry (agent) was saying something & I didn’t agree with him. And he’s a fool. And I don’t care you can write it because this is what actually happened. And the written word is remembered more than the …He was asking Cromartie. He was telling me, “Look at this guy, he’s got a beautiful body.” You know., he’s trying to get me to say that Cromartie has got a beautiful body.” No shit. I know what a beautiful body is. I used to have one….Then he’s asking Cromartie to tell me what he sees when he sees the Japanese undress. Cromartie came out with then flat chest. They’re skinny & scrawny. You know, I’d like to see Cromartie tangle with one of these skinny and scrawny guys. They’ll beat the living shit out of him. Especially if he goes to that first baseman, Komada? He’s a big boy. He’s no skinny, scrawny runt. Come one.
Q: Nice guy, the way he runs his teammates down.
A: You know say that. Then I read your book where the guy goes around grabbing peckers. Come on. You’re skinny & scrawny and you’re going to run around the grab somebody’s pecker who might be 6 feet tall. And I can’t buy it. I said, “Oh, come on. Cromartie’s not big. He hasn’t seen….” I said, “Did you see the Animal (Brad Leslie). Now that guy is big. That guy has got a beautiful body. And he is there and when he grabs you with his hand, you know you put your hand in a man’s hand. Cuz he’s got a hand twice my size. And he’s only 6’6” or something like that. I said, Come on. Warren? He’s below average.” I don’t give a fuck.
Q: I’ll let you listen to my tapes of Cromartie sometime. Talk about conceit.
A: I hope I don’t sound conceited.
Q: No.
(NET WORTH)
A: I don’t look down on people. If I’m forced to, oh be careful. But with those two people I didn’t have to show who I am and what I am. And what I got…..He says, “I got a beautiful house in Miami.” ….I said, “Yeah, the little house I had was a 4-bedroom house, but it was 10,000 square feet.” I automatically let them know…(garbled). I said, I only had 4 maids. And each maid had their own room. That was another of the house. Then I had an office building in the front. That was another part. I don’t even count that. But that property today is worth about 50 million to 70 million yen a tsubo. 275 tsubo.You know what kind of money that son of a bitch is? (yes. Approximately 200 million dollars) They cheated me out of it.
Q: When you were at your peak financially what would you say you were worth?
A: Oh, right now. I’m worth more than I ever was. I’d say right now if you came around with 15 million dollars. I probably wouldn’t accept it. My business . My assets. My land. My buildings. So this guy Larry, he asked me that question. “What would you take, to sell it?” “About 20 million dollars.” I said.
I could break it down for you. My land is Yokota is 275 tsubo. And it;’s worth about (inaudible) per tsubo. That’s about ten million dollars. There. And the profit that that place makes is about 600,000 or $700,000 a year…..(garbled)…Then of course you got tables, chairs, refrigertators, & ongoing business. So like I was going to sell it, I’d sell it for one year gross income plus assets. That would be twenty million dollars.
Q: That your total worth? You have cash in bank?
A; Just the house in Hawaii that’s probably wroth half a million dollars. & if I count the people that owed me money, I’d count a million dollars. I gave away to friends. They tell me, they can’t live. I had to go to Las Vegas and bail a friend of mine out that’s in the gaming business. He had all kinds of money trouble. Another guy in Hawaii. I bailed out. I did so much to help people. But it was easy come easy go……You know if you make $10 today and you know you’re going to make $10 tomorrow, you not going to worry about 10 bucks today. You’d give it away.
Q: I loaned big chunks of money to people. 3 times to friends….etc. etc;. blah, blah.
A: You can write this down. You got the tape working. There’s a guy W. W. Duke. He was born in Germany. His name is Walter Wellington Duke. Born in Germany. Came to U.S. Was a major in the 11th airborne. And we worked together as investigators. And one day he came around and said he was going to get divorced and said he needed two thousand dollars. & I gave him $2,000. And I got my money back. But I never got friendship back. He was a friend of mine until that time. Now he lives in Ft. Meyers. And he won’t even send me Xmas Cards. And I used to send him Xmas cards. I never got ansswers…..I got it back because there was another guy in my office named Boyce, and he was once of my superiors. And he borrowed $20 or $50 or something like that. Not much. But payday came and I didn’t get it. 2nd payday came and I didn’t get it. & this guy is like a GS-12. & I’m a 7. 8. & I went to him and I said “You owe me $50 bucks.” And he says “Well, you know…” I said, “you don’t give me the 50 dollars I’m gonna knock you all over this fujcking place. So you make sure you pay.” So everybody knows what kind of a man I was. I’d fight. I didn’t give fuck who it was. So he just dug into his pocket and dug out 50 bucks. And I said, “Ok. You got an extension on life now.”
So when Wally Duke was involved, I gave him money, but he also knew he’d have to worry if he didn’t pay. So he paid, no problem. But there were a lot of people. Robert Parson was in my group. Another investigator. He was a captain in transportation and he got involved with truckloads of soap that disappeared. But then again, those days, everybody was a dog robber.
(etc. blah)
I don’t think I ever grossed, averaged less than a million dollars a year in this restaurant business. Average income was 3 million dollars a year. 35 years. Lot of money. I owned 5 properties in Roppongi. If I didn’t lose them, I’d be worth a billion dollars today. But I lost them. Including 75 tsubo right across the street by the bank. Today it’s got to be worth 100 million yen a tsubo. (ichi oku yen a tsubo) That’s 7 billion 600 million yen. (approx. 70 million US dollars) I owned 270 tsubo of land where I had my private home, in Roppongi. In Gazembo-cho.. That’s worth 50 mill. A tsubo today.
Whichn by the way Ark Hills owner Mori is trying to buy for extention of part. Complex. Then I owned the one on the highway. That’s 170 tsubo. That’s worth about 100 million yen a tsubo. Worth about 125 million dollars.
Then I had the one the hiway ran through Gov’t gave me 97 million yen for that property. 42 tsubo. That was a lot of money in those days.
Then I bought, where CBS-Sony is, on the street, where American Express is. I bought a 100 tsubo. Today that would be worth about 70 million yen a tsubo.
Then Yokota 275 tsubo. That’s got to be worth a mill. A tsubo today.10 billion yen….1 billion 200 million yen.
Q: You ever meet Shintaro Ishihara.
A: No, I knew his brother.
(garbled, inaudible, too much noise)
A: Frank Sakakibara who went to Greece to buy Onassis boat, Christina. Conned a lot of people out of money. He died in Europe. Nobody knows how. People say he died on the operating table. He gambled and lost money…..I could ‘t help but laughing. He couldn’t buy the Christina if he stood on his head.
I knew everybody. Those days I was a gay blade. Running around to the clubs. And broads. And enjoying life. Everything. Now, I’m not in reverse but I’m in very, very low speed. Matter of fact, I’m coasting. On the fumes of the gasoline in the tank. No gasoline. Just the fumes.
Q: So you didn’t know Morita Akio or Shintaro Ishihara.
A: No, but I think Ishihara is completely out of place. He knows nothing. He just used his name. What the hell does he know about the economic situation in Japan. So he’s a Diet member.He’s only a diet member because he belongs to Sokka-Gakkai. And they vote for him. And he’s got a lot of money yo. He runs around in his Rolls Royce….(inaudible)
Q: But he’s in LDP.
A: He’s in the LDP. But Sokkai-Gakkai supports him.
Q: Sokkai Gakkai has their own party.
A: Ask my wife. She’ll know.
(end of discussion)
Tokyo Junkie 