I´LL QUIT

You know when you say something and then something totally different happens and everything turns the other way? Ok. Today I saw plenty of places for smokers as I was walking in the gaikokujin (foreiners and visitors) area: Harajuku and Shibuya. This areas are kind of trendy, modern, commercial, fashion, crowded, consumist... Uffff, too much. Do you heard about Harajuku Girls? This young ladies they love cosplaying (costume play) and anime and manga things? There´s plenty of them here. I saw some of them while filmings and smoking. But after yesterday´s discussion in the blog I decided to smoke only in any allowed place I could find in my way. And from 11:00 to 18:00, the time I was in the area, I saw more than seven places to smoke. So I smoke more than I used to. But last cigarrette in the JR lines going back home took my attention when I saw something like follows: non smoking hours from 7:00 to 9:00, exactly Tokyo rush hour when trains are full of people. Interesting though!

Having the fact that normally I only see two or three smoking areas in the street per day I can say that is was a good reccord. At the end of the day I was tired of smoking this Marlboro Lights that has no taste at all. For me red box in Japan tastes the same than Marlboro Lights in Europe. Not sure but there´s plenty of different names, lights, extra lights, extra extra light, menthol... But one at the end use to have their own preferences. So while smoking it will be the same shit, not a different one. But I´m really sure I´ll quit very soon. It doesn´t matter what the rest of the people decide. Meanwhile let´s smoke in an allowed area. Why not?

TO SMOKE OR NOT TO SMOKE

Last time I was here in Tokyo in 2005 I realized people smoked lots. I mean it was already not allowed to do it everywhere but I could see lots of smokers. Suddenly going back three years later to Tokyo I see there´s a new law that doesn´t allow to smoke in the streets, only in certain points (you can get mad looking for one).

It all began in October 2002 in Chiyoda district to protect passive smokers and maybe as a way to create a public opinion about, to see how Tokyo people dealed with it. So then this law extended to the rest of the city and in 2004 was rude to smoke in the street and you could be fined even with 20.000 yenes fee. BUT now I´m really feeling the contradiction of this: first is good for passive smokers, as it should be, second is good to see the streets as clean as it corresponds, third is good for a healthy life. In the other hand sometimes I feel like I´m a kind of bad person smoking in public, I hide, even though Kanako´s friend bought me an special pocket astray just in case a police stops me in the street. Almost everywhere you can see images on the floor about 40 centimeters diameter: forbidden smoke. Of course I saw some people smoking in public, 99% of the times in the special places adecuated to it.

It is not a critic itself. It is ok if it is good for the majority, but in my case I arrived here knowing that I didn´t wanted to smoke anymore. Once I saw that it was more extreme than I expected, forbidden almost everywhere, I began to panic so I decided to smoke. No big deal though feeling you are doing something naugthy and looking for a place where to leave the butt. But I´m wondering if there were not such a law I was smoking or not. Anyway, too many people in here and it is good to know about the respect for the others in spite we are talking about a public space. Maybe someday smoking in public is like getting naked. Who knows! I´ll ask my lunges what they think about it.