The NO Smoking in Public places started last October 1,2007 in Osaka City. Unfortunately, this is not yet implemented all over the prefecture. Right now the banned is taking effect along Midosuji Avenue only. If caught you will be fined 1000 yen, kinda hurt the wallet right.

A local television tested how effective this new law will be, so a day before the implementation they collected cigarette butts thrown along the avenue for at least 4 km. They were able to collect almost 1000 cigarette butts.

October 1st, the no-smoking-police marched the street of midosuji, capturing those unwary smokers who did not mind the announcement and who thought the govertment was not serious. There were different reactions, but no matter what they do, they need to pay. Some run away, some got angry but the enforcers were not swayed and were really serious… I salute you sir..

There is a catch though, even if you are standing just a few feet away from Midosuji avenue, you will not be  fined, reprimanded but no fine.  This generated some reactions from Non-smokers, if this is the case then people will just move a few feet away to smoke . Well this was just the first day and a test run, there is still a lot of room for improvement. I hope they will implement this all over the public areas in Osaka, especially in crowded streets.

Oct 2nd, the same local television went out to check for improvement, collecting cigarette butts on the same  area and guess what they were able to collect only about 130 cigarette butts. Not bad.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Life In Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.