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Most visitors to NIIGATA , the largest port-city on the Japan Sea coast, are either on their way to Sado-ga-shima or making use of the ferry and air connections to Korea, China and Russia. It's a likeable but unexciting city, sitting on the banks of Shinano-gawa, with few specific sights beyond a well-presented local history museum. In 1964 a tidal wave devastated much of east Niigata, while the area on the west side of the river retains some attractive streets of older houses. If you're travelling by Shinkansen from Tokyo, make sure you appreciate the journey. Completed in only 1982, this line took eleven years to build at a cost of Y1.7 trillion - a staggering Y6 billion per kilometre - making it the most expensive line in the world and throwing the whole of Japan's national railways into debt. More than one third of the journey is through tunnels and the train takes a most bizarre route, stopping in one-horse villages where the station is the biggest thing around. All this was thanks to Tanaka Kakuei, the MP for Niigata who served briefly as prime minister (1972-74) and who almost single-handedly transformed Niigata from a backwater into a major industrial city - while also garnering a few votes and a substantial personal fortune along the way. For more about the notorious Tanaka and his role in Japanese politics, read Shadow Shoguns .
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