TAKAOKA, Toyama Pref. -- The significance of this month's presidential elections in Russia and their effect on the ruble's value are not lost on Kaneo Sato.
The entrepreneur wistfully recalls a time when Russian sailors and tourists arrived at Higashi port, near the city of Niigata, in their droves for the sole purpose of buying one of the most sought-after souvenirs along the Sea of Japan coast: a secondhand car.
Within a few years, an estimated 200 tourism companies had set up in Vladivostok offering "car shopping" tours to Japan. By the mid-1990s, over 70 percent of the vehicles in the city known as the eastern gateway to Russia were Japan-made, said Sato, president of Trans Siberia Corp., one of dozens of one-man companies that set up shop to export used cars specifically to Russia.