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| | TIMEasia.com: News -- The Grooviest Guv (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22) |
 | | The 45-year-old Tanaka is Governor of Japan's mountainous Nagano prefecture, west of Tokyo, but he's also a writer, specializing in autobiographical pero-guri tales, which reveal a predilection for flight attendants, married women and fine champagne. |
 | | He ignored the entrenched bureaucrats who run things in Nagano, opened the ledger books so the public could see how much his office spends, and announced his intention to cut public-works spending by 15% and stop the construction of expensive dams, museums and highways that, these days, is just about all government in Japan does. |
 | | Nagano is best known for the 1998 Winter Olympics held in its capital, a postcard-pretty ski resort of 363,000. |
| www.time.com /time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,127303,00.html (1817 words) |
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