メルマガ No.250の聞き取り英文（おまけ 〜 NPR）

The "assassins," as the media has dubbed them, include a beauty queen, an Internet tycoon, and a TV pastry chef, apparently picked by Koizumi for their name recognition. The *** imaturies had been hit *** with the often apathetic voters.

As he emerges from a local post office, salaryman, Mataichi Shimizu, says he will vote for the LDP and agrees that Koizumi should send pro-reform candidates to defeat dissenters.

"Instead of seeing them as "assassins," we should see them as supporters of reform of the postal system. The LDP has just send them to the areas where there are no reform supporters, just to give the supporters a choice."

In a television advertisement, the Prime Minister described Sunday as the one-issue election:

"I am Junichiro Koizumi. This election is to ask you if you support or oppose privatization of the postal system."

In Japan, post offices double as banks. They now have with three trillion dollars in assets, making them one of the world's largest financial institutions.

But critics say the LDP often uses the money to reward cronies and fund pork barrel construction projects.

Koizumi has seized the postal issue as a symbol. It's a metaphor for his quest *** a very big a pecan *** for corrupt style of politics by which the LDP's monopolized power for most of the past half century.

The opposition, Democratic Party of Japan, or DPJ, is also hoping to capitalize on the public's hunger for reform. The DPJ has a hundred and seventy-seven seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives.

Kazuo Inoue was campaigning on a Tokyo street corner. He is a typical of a young DPJ legislative candidates with his graduate degree from Columbia University and years of experience overseas working for UNICEF.

"This is the first election in Japan that the two major parties really con..., you know, are contesting for the power. And we hope that, you know, Japan will have also a same political system like uh US and the UK, the two-party system."

Inoue points out that Japan's problems go far beyond the postal system. Similar corruption need to be ruled out other bureaucracies. Japan's pension system needs overhauling, and the country remains myriad in debt more than one point six times its gross domestic product.

But Junichiro Koizumi is due to step down as the head of the LDP next year. And how farther reforms go would be up to the successors.

Anthony Kuhn. NPR news, Tokyo.

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