February, 1988 I

was doing computer graphics with Macintosh. One day a black man visited my office
and asked me to make catalogs for the Indian granite that he was planning to import and
market it in Japan. This was my first experience of keeping in contact with foreigners.
The black man was from a country called xxxxxx and studying Japanese at a Japanese
language school in Tokyo. He met an Indian girl student there at the Japanese language
school and made friends with her. She went back to India after graduation from the
school. Her parents’ family in India had owned a mining company of Indian granite and
for this reason, he came up an idea of importing the Indian granite into Japan.
In the meantime, I had diversified and started handling building stone and the black man
joined my company after he graduated from the language school. However, he did not
come to the office every day but he came to work as he liked and in the end the
relationship between him and I become that of mere friend and not that of employer and
employee. Later I found out that he joined my company for the purpose of obtaining a
work visa.

This was the prelude of hard and difficult journey of my life.

April, 1988

I started import and export business. Soon I was visited by a man from the country
called xxxxx. He was married to a Japanese (she looked like a woman with wounded
heart) and introduced himself to be an used car exporter.

He said to me that he had an order for used cars and an L/C covering the order in his
possession, but did not have enough cash to buy the used cars which he was supposed
to export. He further told me that payment would be made to me within a week after I
had made the shipment of the used cars and presented the L/C to the bank.

I was impressed by this young man as he commanded Japanese language and went into
business in Japan at his age. His face was shinning with hope.

The L/C amount was US$24,000. This was the start of all kinds of failure made by a
foolish Japanese. I was convinced by him and arranged the funds for him to buy the
used cars. Everydayｈe went out to search the cars very hard. From this time on, he
had to ride out many difficulties as this used car business was apparently very new to
him although he pretended to be well versed in it.

From transporting the used cars to a container yard, attending the export inspection
and to effecting the shipment, he did everything by himself desperately. It must have
been a tough duty for the man like him who had no experience in export of used car
business, however, he somehow could manage to do it using other people’s money….

It took us a great deal of time to go this way and that to arrange shipping documents
including the certificate of country of origin. At long last, the documents were
presented to the bank for negotiation. However, the export bill of exchange could not be
negotiated on the spot due to the reason that the L/C had been opened by a local bank
of a less advanced nation.

Many days had passed, yet no money had arrived. Actually, I was not in a position to
know even if money had already arrived as the payment was supposed to be made to
his bank account directly.

“Boss, let’s go there to collect money” he suggested to me one day. I thought it was a
good suggestion. I was na?ve and innocent.　I paid for his air fare and we left Japan for
his home country.

It was a horrible country. We were picked up from the airport. The car was 15-year
old Nissan Sunny, tires had been worn out completely and were punctured after running
every 10 km or so. We boarded the ferry twice. The ferry were crowded with smelly
people including a child suffering from hydrocephalus, a man with just two fingers instead
of five etc, etc. It took us 8 hours to reach the destination.

We were welcomed by several children and women and presented flowers.
I realized that he had been everybody’s hope in the village when I saw some 300 people
coming to greet us curiously. The language they were speaking sounded like an alien
language to me. I was so exhausted that I slept like a log on the bed with the mosquito
net. I was flabbergasted when I woke up the next morning as I saw a strange man
sleeping next to me on the same bed.

Further I saw some 30 people gathered outside of the room I slept and pushing their
faces against the iron-grilled windows of the room and looking and grinning at me. I was
embarrassed as I had an odd habit to grasp my erected penis in the morning while
sleeping. They must have been observing me curiously while I was sleeping in the room
as if I was a rare animal in a cage as I was a real stranger to them. Whatever I did,
blushing my teeth, going to the toilet room, going for a walk, a flock of 20 to 30 people
always followed me.

I went back to the capital city to meet up with the customer whom I exported the used
car to collect the accounts receivable. The customer was saying something in the alien
language and I gathered what he said was that he would not pay for the used car he
imported from me as what he received was a 2-door sedan instead of the 4-door sedan
that he ordered.

I was introduced to several new customers as well. Though he was talking to the new
customers in the alien language, I could sense that he was telling them that he could
send as many used cars as they want making use of me, a sucker he found in Japan.

A few days after I returned to Japan from this unprecedented trip, he informed me
that he had received a part of the accounts receivable and brought me the part of
money. He had disappeared and I have not heard from him since then.

It cost me four months in total and the “lesson fees” were \2,100,000 that I consider
to be appropriate expenses as it stood me in good stead for the business venture I have
been pursuing ever since then.