How about for the surreal Japanese-English “poetry”? To intimidate smokers, here in Canada, we get right to the point. The packages are covered with horrible pictures of damaged lungs, dead fetuses, mouth cancer sores, and grim death-related slogans (Cigarettes hurt babies; Tobacco use can make you impotent). In Japan, they’re a bit more cute about it. Here are some anti-smoking signs, from a “smoking station” in Tokyo (see the reference image here, in Flickr):

• A lit cigarette is carried at the height of a child’s face. (Especially true if it’s a child smoking it, I suppose.) Gotta love that illustration — but why the helicopter? I also love the fact that they leave it up to you to decide whether face-height cigarettes are a good or bad thing. “Just the facts,” indeed.
• I carry a 700°C fire in my hand with people walking all around me. Again, is this really so bad? In fact, it sounds kind of superhero-ish. Maybe I’ll start smoking just so I, too, can be cool and carry a 700°C fire in my hand! Let’s see how close the people around me walk once they see that!
• This one’s a sad love poem: Inhaled. Burned. Thrown away. If it were anything but a cigarette, it would surely be crying. You know, I hadn’t thought about it from the cigarette’s point of view, but this is a good point: I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for all the poor cigarettes I’ve neglected to smoke in my life. What about their needs? Seems I’m hurting them more than they’re hurting me. I love the illustration of the person “making love” to the cigarette (meet; love; the end — how true). And there’s that bird, sitting in a tree, watching the whole pathetic scene, as autumn leaves silently tumble to earth like so many flame-extinguishing tears.
• The cool cowboy flicks his cigarette butt into the street. But he lives in an old movie. It seems the cool heroes and villains of “a long time ago” were very much larger-than-life. At least, larger than their horses. I guess to look cool riding a Shetland Pony, you pretty much need to smoke!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 14h15 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.