SAITAMA -- Yukinori Takahashi, 51, waited nervously with five other entrepreneurs in a spacious room at the business startup support center in Saitama Prefecture.
After a while, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister, finally arrived as TV crews and journalists waited keenly in the same room, and Takahashi began to describe his business hardships.
"I am a good example of life betting on a second chance," said Takahashi, now president of welfare service company Wisnet Co., which has more than 1,300 employees.