(TAPE 17) Nicola Interview May 15, 1991
(Note: Most of Side A is boring and pointless)
(Incl: Japanese Gangsters Fighting Spirit, Roppongi Restaurant/Piano Player, Whitney Houston, Koreans in Japan, Turkey Chick Imports, Nick Speaking Japanese, Of Faxes{Stolen & Otherwise) and Word Processors, Laser Eye Treatment, Income Tax BS)
SIDE A
(Counter 000)
(JAPANESE GANGSTERS FIGHTING SPIRIT)
(Before tape starts is conversation about two old gangsters Whiting met previous night in Kamakura bar, from then old Shinjuku Wada gang. They bragged out old yakuza ritual of stabbing self with sharpened wooden chopstick to show fighting spirit, etc.)
A: The thing is if the Japanese got so much guts and fighting spirit, why do they talk so fucking much when they get arrested? They’re worse than the radio. Jesus Christ.
Q: That’s a very good question. Not all of them talk.
A: All of them. All of them. They get in that fucking place and they just spill the beans. They commit a crime and they confess to it. Like these guys that just got kidnapped…they kidnapped somebody, a printer or some shit like that, for twenty million yen, they already confessed. What the hell are you gonna commit a crime for if you’re gonna confess to it. I mean it’s stupid.
Q: Yeah, but Matsubara and Machii and those guys, they didn’t confess, did they?
A: They confessed because they went to jail for what, a few years. So they confessed…they had a gun. It was a fair fight.
But the Japanese enjoy when 2 gangsters fight and one days. They encourage that. It”s one way to decimate the population of gangsters. America…they would protect the…don’t fight fellows. It’s against the law to shoot each other. But go out and shoot other people. That’s ok.
So you enjoyed your life in Kamakura yesterday. But they were Tosei-kai.
Q: Wada gumi is what they said.
A; I thought down there was old Tosei-kai. I don’t even remember…
Q: The guy had a nice tatoo. He said it took two months to do it. He said it was really painful, with the needle.
A: He should be very proud. He doesn’t have to wear a T-shirt anymore. He’s got his own T-shirt, right.
Q: They kept talking. They kept plying me with sake. It’s brutal to mix sake with beer.
A: You should not…because you don’t eat….If you’re gonna be…I hate to say it to you…If you’re gonna be a drinker without eating, just, wherever the kitchen is, try to get a glass of olive oil. Or bread and butter. A lot of butter on it. A little bread. That’ll coat your lungs and then you don’t get drunk. You get drunk because the alcohol goes in and spreads out. But if the alcohol goes in, like the olive oil, it’ll go in and go straight out. You’ll be peeing whiskey and half olive oil.
Q: I’ll try to remember that.
A: Well you should know that. It’s a common thing.
(I don’t know why I’m typing this)
A: Always eat anything with oil. Oily based foods. If you can do this, eat butter.
(Schedule discussion)
A: I got to go to court on the 22nd.
Q: Can I get something to eat? Too early?
A: Pinto….
(RESTAURANT BUSINESS: PIANO PLAYER)
A: Well, we’re changing the restaurant a little bit now. Going the economic way. Some American New Yorker put an ad in the paper that he plays the piano. His name is David Holland. I called him up, and he’s got an answer phone. That gets me pissed off. Looking for a job and you got an answer phone? Crazy. So I said I really do need a ..
(order food)
A: So I called a few times and he answered and I said, “Is this the answer phone?” He’s trying to figure out what the hell was going on, Cuz the phone didn’t ring, he just picked it up. Anyway, so he talked, from New York, plays all kinds of music, and he sings and I said I gotta listen to your voice, cuz I’m not about to hire a black man. Shit for birds the Japanese. So anyway, he came around last night at 6 o’clock. And he’s what you picture a piano player to be. No exercise, you know, they sit there. So, he’s all right. He played a lot of songs. You know, that flare style. Talk about it. He’s played in the Catskill Mts or something like that. So I sez ok, yeah, there’s a piano. This piano’s tough because it’s got electronics in it. Anyway, he played the piano. He played the songs you like. There’s no microphone, so today, I sez, ok, I give you a job. He said I want 20,000 yen a day because it’s negotiable. I said OK, cuz those are the magic words. Negotiable. I sez, you work for me you gonna be famous, because I don’t wanna work once a week. Work everyday and people get to know you. See you. Dress properly.
(order food)
A: So anyway, he played. He qualified He’s all right. He knows what it is He says, Jesus, I never played in such a high class restaurant. I said what makes this place…He says the chairs. You can always tell a restaurant by the chairs. If the chairs are good the restaurant is good. That’s good news. So today I said, “I’ll meet you at 11 o’clock in the morning.” I took him down to Yamaha. I said “Play an piano. Pick one out.” So he picked out a 2 meter grand piano. 1.8 is a baby grand. 2 meters is a little bigger. Get somebody to put a bar around it. Get a new microphone system in.
Q: How much a piano cost?
A: 1.7 (mill.)…It’s a hard world we live in, because everybody’s got a different price. Same piano. My niece. My daughter in law, I guess you’d call her. She bought a new piano, which I paid for. And it was 1.3. It’s got the box with it. And she said that this is a big piano. They had an upright. They got rid of the upright. They traded it in. So I went there and I asked the guy, “How much for the computer box?” Put CD’s in in the automatic player. He said nan-ju-go-mon. (750,000 yen). I said Jesus Christ take it easy.That’s a lot of fucking money, nana-ju-go-mon, I said let’s forget about it. I sez, you don’t want that. It affects the playing. So Ok. But now I’m listening to him and wondering why would the piano teacher allow them to buy a piano with a computer in it? Again, it would affect the finger power. So I called up my daughter-in-law and said “How much does a piano cost?” She said, “you paid for it.” I said, “I wanna know what the hell,” She says “1.3” I sez, “this guy’s asking me for 2.5 almost. There must be something wrong. It’s double.”
Q: Same piano?
A: No, it turned out she got a baby grand, 1.6…I sez OK, forgettabout it. She sez I can get you a 15% deduction. Forget it. 15% don’t mean shit. Already in 2 million yen 15% is san-ju-mpon? Forgettabout it. So we’re gonna have live music.
Q: Good for you.
A: Yesterday when I was down the street I saw a little, I don’t know what you would call it, playing the accordion in the street. Hustling for money? Yeah. So I sez “Hey. Come up to this restaurant up here. I’ll talk to you about making a little extra money. But then I got second thoughts about it because those kind of kids are running around the streets playing
Music instruments. They’re looking with the little…you know the monkey. The monkey run up and down collect money.
You know that joke about the Texan guy went in the bar. And the Italian organ grinder was grinding music and he sent the monkey up and down the bar to collect money…anyway the Texan guy gave him $5 and the monkey went back to the old guinea grinder. Gave him the 5 dollars, he says hey that’s good, go back down again. He went back down again, got another 5 dollars and came back. Guy sitting next to him, he sez, “hey, bill, what you doing, giving all these 5 dollar bills away.” He says, “I feel so sorry for these little Italian kids.”
Italians don’t like those jokes.
But I was watching the broadcast satellite the other night. I don’t know if I told you but, this guy’s a disc jockey. And they were showing people who wanted to do something on tv. And a 95 year old man said “I want to sing a song.” And he got up
there and sang one of Tom Jones’ songs. And some girl, they were all grandmothers, but they wanna be disc jockeying. And the guy says “What do I do. I just got married and my wife left me.” He sez, “How lucky can you get?” Can you imagine that? Then the other guy sez yes, the girl calls him up, she wanted a song, he sez can you answer a question, she says yes, he says, “Do you sleep on your stomach?” She sez “no.” He sez, “Can I?”
Q: Jesus Christ.
(WHITNEY HOUSTON)
A: Oh what is her name, Oprey Winfrey or something like that. That black broad. You know those are all King Productions. You know who King is don’t you?
Q: Larry King?
A: Don King. You’ll see. Even Inside Edition is Don King. (huh?)
Q: Is that right?
A: King productions. Well, he promotes black…He had that Whitney Houston on. And she was saying, you know, god damn it, I went out with this guy and the first thing you know they got me sleeping with him and pregnant with his baby. She says I went from a lesbian to a whore in one shot.
Q: She said that on television?
A: She said that on television. Inside Edition. You know I tried to be very nice. But she’s the meanest fucking broad god every created. I almost wanted to pick up the phone and call up…oh, she’s a mean bitch.
Q: That’s too bad. I always thought she was .
A: She’s a lesbian. She stays with her fucking secretary. She just played her. You know this guy Rick Roa that you met here. Well he was the promoter of the big shows they had in Yokohama. With, who was that guy, Dick Clark? Dick Clark promotions. So they had her and Gloria Estefan. Kenny Rogers. Bobby Brown. He said, “What a bitch that fucking broad is?” They made a reception for her and the Grand Hotel in Yokohama. And she’s supposed to be there at 8:30. And everybody’s there. My niece and nephew were there. I was in Hawaii. And she didn’t show up. She didn’t show up. Checked and said She was still working, rehearsing, so she couldn’ get there for another hour or two, so he told everybody she wasn’t gonna get there for another hour or two, they left. She pulls up with the limousine, her secretary or suckretary, which ever way you want to pronounce it, wetn upstairs and looked around, and didn’t even bother talking to anybody, went downstairs, sez, there’s nobody up there, let’s leave. She had 75,000 pounds of equipment.
52 relatives. 2.5 million dollars when they work.
Q: That’s disgusting.
A: It is disgusting.
Q: You see the guy the other day in IBM got 78 million dollars. Iacocca was questioned and he said, “You can ‘t help it. These CEO’s can quiet any time they want to. They don’t have any contracts. And a baseball player, he’s a free agent. He can get whatever he can. So why can they get whatever they can.
Q: Company loses money, and Iacocca gets a raise.
A: They fire thousands of people. But you see that’s why they clamor for equal tax for everybody. It shouldn’t be that way, but then, the rich guys says “Why should I pay 75% when you’re only paying 20%.” But that I think is very hard. Like Donald Trump, he says, “I got to have $500,000 a month to break even.” His cost of operating one month is $500,000. Jesus Christ, how do you spend $10,000 a day or $15,000..
Q: Getting Marla Maples. That’s how you do it.
A: Maybe that’s what caused it. And that Ivana says I think I got the last cash he ever had. She got $10 million in cash.
(Talk about Cromartie. Baseball book. Even more pointless than the preceding interview portion. Inre: P.R. tour, Ken Macha, etc.)
(KOREANS IN JAPAN)
(Discussion about top baseball player Takashi Nishimoto hiding his Korean background. Sued Japanese magazine for saying he was Korean. Seguing into talk about Frank Nomura, the waiter).
A: We had Nomura work here. Basically his father’s a Korean, his mother’s a Japanese. Illegally married or illegally what do you want to call it. And he’s classified as a Japanese. Now if the mother is Korean and the father is Japanese, he’s Korean. No matter what it is, he’s Korean. He’s not half Japanese and half Korean. And they like to talk about who is Korean. Like Niura is a Korean pitcher. Nishimoto is a Korean. They like that.
Q: The shit that I’ve heard since then. Like this reporter I met who’s helping me get the introduction to the Tosei-kai. He wrote for the Sankei for a long time. But covered baseball. He went back and forth between Seoul and Tokyo. He says in Seoul, Nishimoto is regarded as a Korean in the sports newspapers. He’s treated as one of their own..(unintelligible)…He said everybody knows that he’s not a full Korean, but that he’s part Korean and has got Korean heritage. And you know people are laughing at him because he made such a big deal about it.
A: But now you say how did he get a Japanese name? You know they give themselves Japanese names.
Q: They give themselves Japanese names. Lots of them.
A: Hadda work for them. That’s kind of hard. They don’t have birth certificates.
Q: I think what happened was one of his grandfathers married a Korean woman. Reporters that I know who’ve been covering this for years say he’s a quarter Korean.
A: Frank Nomura, his name is Yum….so, now he’s a Japanese…But his kids couldn’t go to Japanese school because they are Koreans. They had to go to Korean school. And he tried very hard, his mother, his mother’s a Japanese…but Japan is full of that shit.
A: …glad you’re hungry.
Q:…I’ll never do that again…mix sake and beer..
A: You ever been to Taiwan?
Q: Yeah
A: You ever drink with those guys?
Q: No.
A: They challenge you. Guys pours a glass of whiskey, he challenges you, you gotta drink whiskey. Guy next to him pours a bottle of beer. A glass of beer. He challenges you. You gotta drink beer.
Q: I’m glad I don’t live in Taiwan.
A: When you get through, you’ve got all kinds of shit in your gut.
.Q: Ah shit.
A:…You’re faster than me. Very few people are faster than me….Well this is good after drinking red….
(TURKEY CHICK IMPORT)
Q: Did you find out about the Turkey chicks yet.
A: I guess it’s AA. Automatic Approval. I’ll get the American Embassy to confirm and tell me why.
Q: What do you mean automatic approval.
A: IQ means import quota. These are phrases that you find in the import-export business. Or whatever you want to say it.
Q: So why you having such a hard time getting them in?
A: Oh, not yet, yo. So I called up this company in the States. Orisi, in California….So I called up. I asked the guy, you sell chicks? He sez “No, we sell eggs.” I say, “How much for an egg?” He says 71 cents. Jesus Christ. And they want 14 dollars for a chick here.
Figure that fucking thing out. From 71 cents to 14 dollars. 1800 yen. 1900 yen. So I sez, I’m interested in importing, I don’t know, 500. He says, “Well, we generally ship 20,000 and 30,000 at a time.” He sez “Today we’re sending 36,000 to Mexico.”
I asked him what’s the mortality rate for the hatchery when they come out of the egg. He sez about 82%. 82% come out of the incubator. And 15 weeks for a hen to finish to maturity. And 20 weeks for a Tom. But he says I got no chicks, none for you this year. We are behind production. Of course in America you eat dinner all the time. Parties and.
In this country they thinks it’s on Thanskgiving and Christmas. So now I gotta find out what incubators cost. And the hatchery is 28 days in the incubator.
Q: So you might be able to get them in then.
A: AA. Automatic Approval. But I got to worry about how they box them, when they box them, how they get to Japan, how they get to Hokkaido, but it’s okay, then it’ll be next March. Of course I’m trying to figure out how to buy 5,000 at a clip.
Q: I thought you said 500.
A: The guy don’t want to talk to me for 500. So 5,000 is all right. If they weigh 100 grams each. It’s 500 kilo. 500 kilos is not much. I don’t know the space involved. Now I got to find an incubator. So I wrote a guy a letter. I just mailed it to him….I want to know why the American would sell the egg for 71 cents & the Japanese sell the chick for 14 dollars. What the hell is missing? Got a duty on it? What can make the egg go that high? Like I wrote in the letter? Is this another way to stop the Japanese from buying rice?
Who the fuck is gonna buy a chick for 1700 1800 yen? And then 14 weeks later, 15 weeks later, let’s take the number 17 and a half, to give between 15 and 20. What does it cost to keep that chicken under supervision for 17 weeks. Then what do you sell it for. You get 4,000 yen for a turkey? How can it be? You might get five, but you’re talking 2000 before you start. That’s 40% of the selling price. If you can get that price. But, of course, if I do it. If I get into that position, I’ll buy 5,000 next year. Try to go for 20,000, 30,000 a year. And you’ll be able to buy turkeys from me for a low price….I don’t give a fuck..I don’t care about the money involved. I just want to do something productive..
So I might turn this into an Italian Turkey restaurant.
Guys says “How do you grease a car in Italy?”
He sez, “You run over a greaseball.”
So over here, we’re gonna have Italian Turkeys. How do you do that? You put ’em in a greaseball. Cook ’em with a greaseball or something like that.
I get all these desires. I raise beef. I took a fucking beating. I raised pork. I took a beating. I had 5 turkeys before, but the fox got them before my oven got them….You know a red fox used to come over to my property to cry for food. I mean he cried. But he ate all my turkeys. Son of a bitch. And you know I told that to the guy in California and he laughed. He said we have that problem here. Jeez, if they making all those kind of eggs. Gotta have a lot of layers, uh?
But I don ‘t want to ask him the delicate question like “How many hens to a ton?” and he says, “Oh, oh, this guy’s gonna try to breed them.”
But like I say, there’s a lot of opportunities here if you can change your name to Koizumi. Your name is Koizumi Akira, they don’t that it’s really Nicola Zappetti or some shit like that. You hide behind the name.
Q: You mean people will do business with you.
A: Oh, yeah, until they find out your Japanese is okashi (strange) Japanese and then they check a little bit and find out that’s a gaijin.
Q: That ever happen to you?
A: Oh, well. They don’t want to talk to you. You know, like this place here, I been trying to sell it for years. Right. Oh, they’ll talk to you. But they come around and they figure, oh, he’s a carpetbagger. He wants to grab money and run out of the country. So they don’t offer you that. They don’t want to look at the statistics and value of this and the business reports. Like I had the Futenka shinka (unintelligble), well they tried, they tried to buy this place. Cuz they’re in the fastfood business, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing. And they wanted to see my reports and I showed them like I had the Nicola Enterprises money, because I was financing the Koizumi-Nicola company. I put a million dollars in that company. How do you put a million dollars in that company without someplace losing it. You just can’t pick it out of the sky, you know. So you manipulate. So I assured them/showed them Nicola-Koizumi was losing money because the first year we did this, the second year we did that, the third year we did that, we took the profits and put it in. The guy says “Oh, that’s a bad balance sheet. Forgettabout it..”
Now the Indian who wants to move into this place, his father is Tokyo technology company. He makes citizen watches in Sendai and he makes watches in Bangkok. He makes watches in Bombay…..
(NICK’S SPEAKING JAPANESE. BUYING A PIANO)
(phone call. Nick doing business in Japanese. Broken error-laden Japanese. Ordering a piano)
eg. Nedan ikura…makeru kudasai…ok daijobu…kimochi yo…moshi geppu ni kai, sai kai, wakaranai, rishi kuru……ka gambatte mashoo).
A: Well, I got the piano for 10% less. The barstool is free. Hyaku nana ju mon. 10 % is ju-nana-mon. It’s kimochi no monai. (problem feeling)…He says, “Oh, Yamaha doesn’t lower the cost.” I sez, “Yamaha sells 25,000 pianos year to the United States. 25,000” I sez, “The best piano made in the United States is Steinway. They make 3,000, 3500 pianos a year.” Imagine that? Fuck it…and they don’t even have a white piano. I said
“How can you export 25,000 without having a white piano in your warehouse.”
Uhhh. “yon, go-kagetsu matte kudasai.” (Wait 4 or 5 months).
(OF FAXES [STOLEN & OTHERWISE) AND WORD PROCESSORS)
Q: I finally got a fax by the way.
A: Oh, you did…Somebody stole my fax.
Q: Somebody stole your fax?
A: Well, I got an idea who it is. And I gotta ask another question. I had a fax on that beautiful cabinet I got there. I put it up there because I wanted to use this place here to receive fax. So people can fax us for parties and things like that. Right.
Q: Your phone’s ringing.
A: They’re 3 phones in this place…So anyway, so Buzz Trudeau is working here during January and February.And it disappeared at that time….and…he didn’t take the whole unit. You know where the sheets go in. He didn’t take that. I mean, of course, you don’t need that. It’s your sheets that come out there. The other sheet’s coming in the machine. You know. But I couldn’t figure why. It’s a fucking machine that I bought on lease. I mean it’s a lease machine. I don’t own it. So now I’m in trouble. Somebody stole the lease property.
Q: What’s the lease for?
A: I leased 5 of them. I didn’t want to buy them, because lease is an expense. You gotta learn that little thing. So you get yourself a lease. Anything. Car. Anything. It’s an expense. And you use it just like you own it.
Q: It was pretty cheap. 120,000 NTT.
A: Well I paid 5,000 yen a month. 5 years. 300,000. But it’s 300,00 expense and I got 5 of them. I think I got 3 of them. I got in my office. I got one in Yokota. I got one in Chuo Rinkan. I think I had 3 of them. Now I got two left. Then I also bought a blood pressure machine, you check your blood. It was up there. I hate to ask the question…Is that gone too? Buzz denied that he stole it. Because you know the Japanese will always say the gaijin did it. And he’s the gaijin sitting there until 4 in the morning. But then he’s going to New York. So what the fuck is a machine. The machine’s no good in New York. It’s a different wave length. (pron. “lentz”). I don’t think you can bring a Japanese machine and plug it into the States and it works. I don’t think it does.
Q: Why not? I mean you can send a fax on an international phone call.
A: No, but the receiver machine has a different signal. You know, frequencies or whatever you want to call it. You know, same like a tv set. You can buy a tv set that works in Japan, bring it to the States, it won’t work. Different. Something different. Herz. Megacyles. But there’s different.
Q: But a fax is…
A: You gotta have a fax.
Q: Sometimes I feel like you know we’re going backwards. You call up somebody, call up New York and explain he problem. They say write me a fax. I say I don’t want to write you a fax, that’s why the telephone was invented, so you don’t have to sit down and write everything out.
A: I’ll tell you why. Fax is black and white…..and now it’s 3 a/m. in New York, you gonna pick up the phone and call the guy at 3 a.m. So you type down what you want. You put it in the fax machine. It goes there. 9 o’clock in the morning, he picks it up and reads it. It’s positive what you said. There’s no misinterpretation. I think you said this. I think you said that. Like the other day, ok. So I called up this turkey company and I sez don’t you guys have a fax and he says yeah and he gave me the fax number. And I said ok I’ll send you a fax. Sonna bitch I can’t find the fax number. Cuz it’s so easy to write it down. I
know what I did. Instead of writing the area code and the middle number, I wrote the last four numbers. And then I write them and I forgot they were the last four numbers. I’m looking for the fax number. The 209 Area Code, the 528 or whatever it is. And I says shit, I ain’t got the fax numbers. So I wrote a letter to send a letter. But a fax is very very important. You don’t have to worry about the guy who says I’m gonna get you 8%…and…it’s written in black and white. And then you can quote the fax. So you should not operate without a fax. It’s a written record.
It’s the same thing, I went to Russia I tried to rent property in Russia, geez, I had 3 hectares right in the center of the city, and I put an ad in the paper and some woman answered, a kid crying, I said, Jeez, these people are crazy. Don’ t they know the middle of Moscow must be fucking expensive. Cuz you’re only leasing, you’re not buying. But I should have put down, Fax only. And once you send a fax, it’s got your number on it, certain, certain time, it shows on it. You can’t hide the fact that you said that at 14:02 pm, it’s there. Better than a letter writing. Letter writing, you don’t have a copy.
Q: That’s true.
A: With a fax, there’s a copy. You always got the fax, what you wrote. So now, if you gonna start on the fax you…you got a word processor?
Q: Yeah…
A: Then you push and you store, load document, from this, well what you should do. You need a …I don’t have a cover paper. But I think what you should do is know what you’re doing. Like, I learned now, because I used to disks up. Now, I put like, this guy I just sent a letter to, I put code, his name is ORLOPP-1. I wrote it on the thing there. Now that’s my code. Now when I see it I wanna look at the machine, although I got the copy, I wanna look and maybe I want to change it. I wanna go back and change that damn thing, …cuz when you start looking at these god damn fucking…I got a Panasonic word processor…let’s say I wanna write to you, I say Whiting. If I write 1, at least I know it’s one. And then you’re looking to say Whiting, Whiting, Whiting, Whiting. Well which one am I looking for. Which letter am I looking for. I want to see what I wrote. You don’t know. So you gotta have a code.
Q: I just use numbers..
A: What do you mean numbers, numbers don’t tell you nothing.
Q: No, I use, like a MacMillan, I just put in the code Mac 1, Mac 2, Mac 3, Mac 4.
A: But you got to put it also on the paper. So this way, you got a paper. Cuz you don’t know what’s in the machine. But you got a copy of the fax that you sent. You look at it, you say Max 1. You know that was Max 1…..Like in my case I wrote the Gold Story, I said like, Jeez, I tried to hide the commission from the Chinese. And I said well I need 25,000 to pay for more gold. My lawyer says you can’t do that. That shows you’re the buyer.You’re the seller, see. So I had to change it, so now I had to go back to the gold story, find that part and put the eraser on it, clean it up and make it so, in case the fucking police raid my office and they grab those disks, now what. It says, “You wrote that in the machine.” So you gotta know, you always gotta protect yourself against somebody finding out what you got. You may think it’s a secret, but what is a secret. Your wife comes to Tokyo. She’s smart enough to know which number to press. She’ll look in all the fucking titles that come out. She’ll say, “Let’s see. Who’s this girl Maria?” Huh? And the fucking letter will come right on the screen. So you gotta know what you’re doing. I know because I got gold story, gold story, gold story. I don’t know which one is which. Back to the lawyers. So now I say…if it’s a short name, like Bob. Then I write 5/22. I know that’s May 22nd. That’ll give me an idea what date it was. Cuz you look at all those names and then they say next page. Next page means if you didn’t fill up the disk, you gotta push again and another page comes out. And I didn’t even pay attention to that, so one day, I just pushed next page and Jesus Christ I got 10 more letters, cuz what that fucking machine does it doesn’t put them in chronological order when you type them. It puts all Bob. Well you got Macmillan 1,2,3,4 10,15, 20. Then you got 16,000 others things. You right June 17, it goes in column and pushes the “W” down, to the next page, the next page, next page, like that.
So that’s, anyway.
What are you planning. What are you thinking of questioning?
(LASER EYE TREATMENT)
Q: The Laser Eye Treatment.
A: I went to Toranomon Byoin.(hospital). Dr. Totsuka. He’s the head doctor of the Eye Department at Toranomon Byoin.
(phone call)
Q: What was wrong with your eye?
A: I’m now down in Showa go-ju-nana-ne (57). Cuz my next license would be 62. 5 years right. So about rokuju-ni-nen (62), or roku-ju-ichi-nen (61), I’m driving slow. My speed has gone down because my speed is not up there. My wife says you’re driving slower and slower and slower. So I went to Toranomon Byoin to have my eyes checked. And he says, well, you got blood in the eyeballs. And I sez, “Ok, how do you get rid of them?” He sez, “Well, you can’t get the blood out.” Then he went through the routine of explaining what is a diabetic. The arteries (note: capillaries) are brittle. Therefore they break. And the blood pours into the eyeball. In that particular case. So the veins take the blood out. And this is all from a restaurant man talking about medicine, ok?
Q: What’d he say? The arteries are brittle?
A: The arteries are brittle because of the sugar. The high sugar contents that sugar people have. Diabetics. So the way to do it is to take laser treatment and cauterize the veins. So it doesn’t come out. You follow that way of thinking. So then I started taking laser treatment. And it was very interesting, because the first day I went to the hospital I drove the car. And I put the car in the parking lot. But then when I came out, I’m seeing red and blue and green and yellow. And I got blurry eyes like you see on the screen, where they put boxes so you don’t see the guy’s face. Cuz that was my vision. So I couldn’t see anything. But I went to the telephone and called my son up and said come and get me out of here because I can’t go home this way. I can’t drive the car. I can’t see where I’m going. So that was my first laser treatment. And they did both eyes at one time. Which was very stupid. You know you got 2 eyes. Fuck up one, but don’t fuck up two. Anyway, as they say, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. So that went on and went on and went on.
And then one day, this junior doctor who was the technician–that’s what you got to worry about, it’s ain’t the doctors. They hire what they call technicians to do the laser work. And this particular little bastard hit me dead center with about 5 shots. You know, it’s like a gun. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Boy I mean in those things, you know you getting laser treatments. It’s not exactly painful but it’s pain. So, of course, I realize that he hit me dead center. And I sez “You hit me dead center.” In the States, you’d sue the shit out of him. And he can’t deny it. Because anybody can look in your eye and see where the laser burn is.
Q: Hit you right in the retina?
A: Right in the …where the eye…so anyway so I went to the main doctor and I sez, “This guy blinded me. Instead of going around the eye where the arteries are, he went dead center. And the doctor’s explanation was that I fell asleep. You know. And, of course, that got me mad, because, if I’m sleeping, they got a machine on the eye that keeps the eyelid open. So what do you do when you sleep?…What the hell does that have to do with the gun?
Of course, Dr. Totsuka wouldn’t take that for an answer. But, of course, they didn’t say much about it. They acted nonchalant.
Q: The young guy said you fell asleep.
A: I fell asleep. They put an apparatus on your eye. You can’t close your eye. You know, because if they hit your left eye, they feel it in your head. It isn’t only a question of the left eye, the right eye feels it too. It’s a lot of power you know. So then I, just to show you that each treatment costs 8,000 yen. That means that they get 80,000 yen per treatment. Because I paid 10%. And the government pays them that other 72,000 yen. You know, 80,000 yen is a lot of money. It’s about 600 bucks. Can you imagine getting a 15 minute treatment for $600. Then the guy blinds you and hits you and I go home and I look at the tenjo (roof) and I can see the spots. I can see the round spots, you know, the son of a bitch.
But, you know, doctors protect doctors. They don’t go against each other. In the States, they’ll sue each other. You know, they don’t do that here. So I gave up on it…the laser. And he says, “It’s best you take a rest and come back in about 6 months or a year.”
And now, it’s coming a little better, because I don’t see the spots anymore. But when I go like this and I look at you, I don’t see your two eyes. I see your mouth. I see your hair. But I don’t see what I’m looking at. I look at the bridge of your nose, forget about it. Because dead center is where he hit. The eye will show, this much, right.
So that’s a present from Toranomon Biyoin. Biggest and best hospital in Tokyo.
So I went there to try to get my eyes fixed so I could take my driver’s test and pass it. And now when I look at the sign that they put up…if it’s one meter away, I barely see it. And you know, I bought 5 meter eye glasses, because five meters is the distance you stand from the eye charts. I look at the eye charts. I can read the top ones. I can’t even read the second line. So I put these glasses on, it don’t mean shit. I can’t see.
So I guess you’d say I’m legally blind.
What about the right eye? The right eye, he didn’t hit me dead center. So I could see with the right eye. I mean I don’t see clear, like, if I go like that (turns head), I see you. But if you move too away you’re out of my vision. But, of course, I got blood in the right eye too. So that was my very, very bad experience with trying to get laser treatment.
Q: But you still have a blood problem.
A: Yeah, when you take a picture of the eye, yes, it looks like it, I don ‘t know what would you say, black spotted or white spotted? Black spots all over…..black spots..,.whatddya call’em, polka dots? I got polka dot eyes.
Q: In the left eye.
A: Left eye.
Q: What, different colors?
A: No, they’re all black. I mean on the picture, I guess it’s a black and white picture. I don ‘t know. No, you don’t see….I see exactly what you see. But I don’t see it clear. In other words, I could see that the glass is here. But if I…I can see 50. But if I try to read the rest, forget about it. I can’t see it.
So Tommy Palmer, when he worked for me, he wore Doctor Cyclops. Remember that movie Doctor Cyclops? Who the fuck was that? I’ll never forget that guy’s name. But I know him. And he had thick eyeglasses. So I tried to find Dr.Cyclops eyeglasses, so I can see better. But, of course, like your book, I was determined to read it. I read it on the weekends.
Q: What do you use, a magnifying glass or something?
A: A magnifying glass. Plus..
Q: Did that laser treatment hurt your vision in the right eye?
A: No. Because you see the laser treatment is around the eye. Obviously the arteries are on the outer edges of the eye, but when the left eye hit me dead center. So when he hit me dead center, whoa , you know it. See. And then when you take that thing off, you look and you don’t see nothing. That left eye was completely black. So I raised hell with what the hell he did…then you look. A good doctor can look and see…they can see where the laser hit.
Q: So before then your vision was bad.
A: It was bad, but it wasn’t that bad.
Q: You could see to drive.
A: I could see to drive. But after that, forget about it.
Q: Now I was taking laser in the left eye and right eye at the same time. So then you know, like me, I’m the type that will count.
Q: Before you took the test, how was your right eye? Like it is now?
A: My left eye and right eye were bad both. They’re both bad. We’re talking how many years ago, 60? Now, it’s about 6 years ago. So the right eye is all right. I mean not that it’s all right. In the case of an emergency I could sit down behind a car and drive but I’m gonna look with this one eye. And as long as there’s no cars all around me, I can drive. I almost did it the other night when my wife got tired, coming home on the Dai-San Keihin. I figured out, let her walk around the car. Left eye is dangerous. Cuz if I go like this I’m in trouble. I gotta keep going this way. You can/t do that when you’re driving.
So I lost my independence.
When you can’t drive, you’re not independent no more.
Q: Why didn’t you sue them?
A: Because you can’t win in Japan.
Q: Tired of going to court?
A: No, I’m in court all the time. No, the thing is that they are considered “sensei’s’ (exalted teachers, doctors), therefore, you are considered a shit, and even thought the statistical facts will prove that it was not proper what he did, what the hell can you do. Did you ever hear of anybody suing a doctor? In Japan? You can’t sue doctors. They’d sue doctors all day long if they could sue’em.
But my wife told me that they eliminated the 72% tax free from doctor’s income. Did you know that? You know doctors were getting 72% tax free on gross income. Then the other 28% they paid their expenses. So that’s why they never pay tax. And now she says they stopped that. That’s good news.
(INCOME TAX: Boring, Irrelevant Conversation)
Q: Have you ever done income tax averaging?
A: What is it.
Q: (Explanation)
A: They don’t do that in this country here. I don’t think you can carry it over. Every year you pay your tax…..
Q: (More BS on income tax averaging)
A: I never heard of such a thing.
SIDE B
A: I never heard of such a system. It’s a great idea, I know you can carry over your losses in business. Private income is 15th of April. However, business income is different.
A: (More BS on income tax in U.S. and Japan.
Tokyo Junkie 