Take a nice cleansing breath...except if you live in Japan. If you live in Japan and take a nice cleansing breath, your lungs will fill with someone else's black cigarette smoke. There are restaurants without no-smoking sections (all smoking) that you want to crawl out of with an oxygen tank within five minutes of entering. The coffee shop we walk to every morning is an all smoking restaurant... but at 6AM we are desperate for anything that is (a) open and (b) serves caffeine. David actually got in trouble for trying to open the window a crack.
When we asked David's psychology colleagues if drugs were a big problem here, they said that the big problem was, actually, cigarette smoking. Supposedly, you cannot buy cigarettes until you are twenty... but I don't know how strictly that is either enforced or followed.
There seem to be no restrictions on the marketing of tobacco. I am surprised there are no Anpanman cigarettes. Brands like Hope, Peace, Mild 7, Pianissimo, Mercedes, Hi Lite and Sakura (Cherry Blossom) wrapped in hip and enticing packages would make anyone want to light up.
Here is a link to pingmag, a great online design magazine. They did a great piece on Japanese cigarette packaging.
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