The Achtung Hobby Japan saga continues

4th of July 2009, this date I will never forget unless I kena alzeimers. Nope, I did not celebrate America's Independence day, nor did I get laid by Miss Universe 2009. It was the day(actually the next day la) I lost respect and hope for my good friend Mr. Kazuya Nakamoto.
It was a usual Thursday, I got a call from Randy at 5:12pm asking whether I want to join him for dinner with small Vincent at Novena Square. I said yes althought I hated the place as thats where I wasted 2 years of my life with my first retail shop unit.
I was the last to arrive, after grabbing the latest Spin bike magazine, which by the way has increased in price to $3 this month, we headed to Fish & Co. for dinner. In which I was surprised by Randy and Small V that they had actually asked me out to discuss about a possible partnership to take over Achtung Japan hobby shop totally. So we proceeded with the discussion. Randy, noting my more than 10years experience in retail businessess, asked for advise on running and start up costs among other things. We discussed many issues and all seems positive that the chances for survival is high with Nakamoto's contact and the community of modelers available.

Topics of our conversation include the way we would run the shop, eg. Frequency of new stocks, what kind of kits to bring in, lesson plans, marketing...etc...

Unfortunately, we keep running into more questions about the number figures of the costs. This is when I suggested going straight to Nakamoto's home to ask him personally all the questions before we make a decision. He will be the one that can fill in all the gaps of our questions and will give us a better picture of the whole idea of running a hobby shop. So I rang him up and he said he was available after 9pm. We finished our dinner and left for his house at around 8:45pm.

When we reached his house, Nakamoto was already outside attending to his plants. We admired some of his fishes and Crypto and quickly settled down along the staircase beside his house for discussion.

We started by declaring that we were there only for a discussion and we were not in anyway concrete in our plans. We wanted to clear some of our questions so we started asking him about running costs, rentals, contacts, survivability...etc......
He answered our questions one by one with the expertise of an experienced shopowner. For costs, he gave us the numbers for rental, costs of goods, electricity...etc. For contacts, he agreed to be the middle man, to order the kits, airbrushes and paints through him and he mark up by 10% and sell us. The discussion was pretty much in full swing now and the picture was getting clearer for us.

Next, came the questions that was later going to erupt into a sms fistfight. We needed a sales staff to run the store daily and we asked Nakamoto San whether Adam was a suitable candidate. To which came the reply "Hopeless" and "need to Kick him out". Small Vince was surprised by that answer and reminded him that he had been tending the shop for so long, its not so nice to not offer him the post. To which Nakamoto replied " this is business what". We suggested Chong and got a similar reaction. Although Nakamoto did mentioned that Chong was an honest guy but was addicted to the shop. He used the word "hopeless" on him as well. Nakamoto even suggested that he could help us tend the shop during the day and we take turns to come down after work. He changed his mind later saying he can't sit still in the shop anymore.

We then asked what happened to the deal he had with Nick and why he did not fully transfer the shop to him. He repeated an earlier story about Nick's money being stuck together in a joint account with his wife and that's why he could'nt pay him as agreed for the rest of the duration. We did not probe further.

We next asked a question that we had wanted to ask for so long. "Why don't you transfer the shop to Adam?" In which he replied " he got no money what". We did not probe further either.

Throughout the whole meeting, Nakamoto San urge us to take over with effect from the next day. We were wondering why the desperation to handover. We keep reminding him that we were just discussing and nothing was concrete. Still, we can sense the desperation. We were wondering why later, as he said his Crypto business was raking in $2000 plus just this month alone. Although the questions of running the shop were answered, we now had new questions regarding the truthfulness of the whole process. If his Crypto business was so good, he could have easily carried out the payment to the shop rental and won't be so desperate to clear it.

It was getting quite late by then and we had to work the following day, so we decided to end the discussion. Again, Nakamoto ask to take over the shop the following day, that's when Randy told him that we were just discussing with him and had to go back and do our own calculations before we could give him an answer. He asked when? and we told him that we will let him know in one week time. He then pressured us by saying he is meeting Nick tomorrow and if Nick say can continue paying him then how? So we said if that's the case give it to Nick then. 1st come 1st serve. In return he say ok, la you'all go decide and let me know in a week. We said goodbye and I even ask when is the next trip to go Malaysia for Crypto collection and to let me know.

The following day, 5th of july, at around evening time, I received an sms and call from Randy. He told me that he had exchanged a few sms with Nakamoto earlier and that the last sms was that to tell the three of us Randy, small Vincent and Me to not visit his shop anymore, we were banned from his shop.

The first reaction I had when I received the sms was laughter! I was giggling to myself. The actual sms read something like; Hi Adam, last nite Randy, smallV and BigV came my house say want to take over my shop and want to kick you and Chong out, so are they friends?
Randy did'nt have to do much explaining about what happened as I could already guess knowing Nakamoto so well.

The sms fist fight went something like this:
Nakamoto had earlier sms Randy that he was; going to meet Nick in JB now, Japan contact you want?
Randy replied that he; go ahead and meet Nick and contact is useless without Nakamoto.
Nakamoto replied; Ya la, Nick also know that and that he got no money to continue paying him.
Nakamoto also replied that ; Nick is best and honest person he encountered in last 10years.
Randy replied; then he should support Nick then as Honest person deserve best.
Nakamoto replied; Ya, not like you, you don't come to my shop anymore.
Randy replied; Ok
Nakamoto replied; and your culture gang too.
That was the last entry.

The next sms from Nakamoto later was the Hi Adam, last nite Randy, SmallV & BigV....... sent to Adam and CC to Randy and Randy to me and small V.

Wow, what a drastic change overnight. Just last night we were discussing about a possible take over of the shop and now, suddenly we were banned from going to his shop. With the addition of a knife stab on each of our backs.

I must confess, I have not met a more horrible Japanese national from my experience. Such a volatile personality, how on earth did he manage his life, marriage, kids and work for so long without exploding is beyond my comprehension. And so EVIL. Just because he can't force an answer from us to his favour, he had to flank us and create chaos by accusing us of back stabbing Adam and Chong. He was probably afraid of us telling Adam and Chong what he had said to us about "kicking him out".

The way he handled negotiation with us was so unprofessional, he devulge what went on between us and him as a business proposal that was'nt finalise to others that were not aware of his fatal character flaws. This had made me realise that the stories that he told me earlier on about Nick and Mr Ang were all made up to sound like he was on the losing end side, that he was the victim. What a load of farcicle bullshit, atypical of traditional Japanese dominant male pride. The very type that made millions suffer the cruel actions and humiliation of the second world war. Bullocks!!!!

This event was so blown out of proportion, even people who were not invloved were receiving sms and questions and speculations were flying around everywhere. We end up having to meet up with Adam to explain what really went on and advise him not to fall into the trap of Nakamoto which was using him to do the dirty job of pressuring us into taking over the shop and brewing the bad blood between us.

Its been about three weeks now since I started the draft of this article. This event has now completely disintegrated as I have expected. No word or sms from Nakamoto anymore, he probably conveniently "forgotten" about the whole incident and went back to his Crypto collecting fever. I will not be surprised if one of these days he will call me up and pretend nothing has happened and ask whether I want to follow him to Malaysia to fish hunt and collect crypto. Again, I am still puzzled by his actions in this event.

I guess its true when people say that you can't say you know a person until you have seen their best and worst sides. The bad side is really ugly I tell you. Thanks to my hardcore training with dealing with difficult customers in my job that I was able to laugh this event off.
But I must say that the Evil Level on this one is ranked on my top 10 list. On hindsight, I was initially correct on not wanting to get involved with the various ideas from various groups on the continuation of the shop.

As this event draws to a close now, I have gained another experience and have grown wiser. I hope to grow wiser as age comes along and that I will not be anywhere like Nakamoto's eratic volatile personality.
Its sad as I treated him like a father and even admired his daring and often times spontaneous way of doing things, his positive outlook of everything at even the worst situation, basically no fear. I will miss his antics and our many trips to Malaysia.

Like Buddha said, nothing last forever.

Peace.