Guidebook of Tokyo restaurants where you’re allowed to smoke
Arts & Culture ( 42 )
Life must be tougher than we’d thought for Tokyo’s dwindling population of wheezers. We’re not sure how else to explain the need for “Tokyo no Kin’en Dekiru Resutoran,” a new guidebook of restaurants where you’re allowed to smoke.
The pocket-sized tome features a total of 202 “well-known establishments where you can enjoy good food and tobacco,” listed according to cuisine and accompanied by notes on the kind of smoking area provided.
You can spark up wherever you like in Xex Daikanyama and Kagurazaka’s L’Alliance, but you’ll have to take it out onto the terrace at Ebisu’s Rabelais, and there are just four smoking seats available at Restaurant Rick in Roppongi.
The book also includes interviews with Soh Kumamoto, the nicotine-fiend proprietor of Soh’s Bar for Miserable Smokers in Furano, Hokkaido, and actor Shunji Fujimura (“Death Note”), who swapped cigarettes for cigars when his doctor told him to quit.
840 yen, 182 pages. Available at bookstores throughout the city.
This story originally appeared in Metropolis magazine (www.metropolis.co.jp).
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42 Comments
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0
movieguy
Seems like a total waste of time because more and more places go smokeless every day. It would be a good idea for a website though.
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paulinusa
Smokers who buy this book must be pretty desperate.
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Scrote
It says "kitsu en", not "kin en" on the cover. These are all places I'll be avoiding.
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tkoind2
Absurd book. Life "tough for smokers?" Absolute and utter nonsense. You can smoke nearly everywhere still. Just try to escape the poison fumes from these suicidal people in central Tokyo. You may as well wish for gold to fall from the sky.
Sure a few places have decided that poisoning the non-smoking customers is a bad idea. But painfully few have done so. Still some cancer intent smoke monster will be blowing his or her grey haze at you over the check high "smoking" dividers that would hardly keep todlers out let alone smoke.
Someone should instead be publishing a photo book with companion video that shows just what it is like to die of lung cancer. Then maybe some of these brain dead addicts will stop poisoning their children, other people's children, friends, family members and the general public with their filthy habit.
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sf2k
Good, now activists will be able to concentrate their efforts. Thanks to the publishers
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mrsynik
Awesome, when's the iPhone App version coming out?
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DC2020
"there are just four smoking seats available at Restaurant Rick in Roppongi" I heard a good quote once - "having smoking and no-smoking sections in a restaurant is like having a peeing and no-peeing sections in a swimming pool". I always make reservations before I go to a nice restaurant and then I confirm there is a no smoking section, if they don't have one or have only the "no-smoking tables????" I always say, oh, ok, sorry never mind, cancel the reservation. Don't know if it has any sway on their future policy or not. But I get to make my point.
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noborito
Seems stupid. I want a book about non smoking establishments. Smoking is everywhere.
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TSRnow
Scrote, same here. I wouldn't go anywhere near these places.
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tokyotales
@mrsynik you should expect it to be out sooner rather than later, with biweekly updates ^^
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ultradodgy
The book is a single word = "Everywhere"
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bicultural
Hmm, it seems a few posters here can't afford to go to nice restaurants. Most of the nicer places I have been to in Tokyo these days are completely smoke free, especially the newer establishments. If you can only afford "izakaya" prices, well you're pretty much stuck with smoke. Used to be a smoker myself, but I appreciate the growing number of smoke free restaurants and cafes.
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tkoind2
bicultural. Nonsense. The smoking problem is still nearly universal. I do go to nice places and still some dragon is belching smoke nearby. In any case life does not revolve around expensive places for most people. Former PM Aso excluded of course.
Most of us go to normal cafes, normal restaurants, family restaurants and neighborhood places. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that the smoking spots outnumber the non-smoking shops by thousands to one.
Smoking is alive and well in Japan making this book one of the most absurd I have yet to see in a place with many idiotic and pointless books.
Some books filled with rotten lung photos and children dying because idiot parents smoke around them would be a lot more useful. The author of this trash should be summarily locked in one of those smoking aquariums that have popped up and forced to breath in second hand smoke until he retracts the entire work and publishes something useful.
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Ah_so
Ironic turn of phrase!
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crazygaijin
we can't all live in bicultural's heady world of wealth. take his/her comments with a grain of salt. he/she is the same person who doesn't mind spending 15,000 to learn how to bake a cake, or spending $100/month on an unused gym membership.
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Tiresias
The article romanises the book's title as “Tokyo no Kin’en Dekiru Resutoran,” Kin'en means "no smoking". 喫煙reads Kitsuen. This might help those desperate souls looking to buy the book!
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bicultural
Is Starbucks outnumbered 1000 to 1 in Tokyo? Not the last time I checked. Sure, half the men still smoke in Japan but the number is decreasing and the number of smoke free establishments is slowly but surely increasing. You just have to look. If you can read Japanese, you're only a click away. Again, I used to be a smoker so I prefer not to be tempted.
0
The758
By reading some of the comments here you'd think smokers were on the same level as child molesters and radical terrorists
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shufu
The758 - I agree.
I think its great that now people have a choice where to go. For example, I would definitely choose a smoke free restaurant (or a place with a non-smoking section) if I was going somewhere with my kids, but to be honest I think the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.
It seems the people who are the most angry about smoke are the ones who used to smoke themselves. Surprising really, as I would expect that ex-smokers would be the most understanding about how difficult it is to stop.
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Sarge
I was surprised recently to find a Gusto "family" restaurant doesn't have a no-smoking section - the whole place is smoking.
0
Fadamor
If the whole place is smoking or they only have designated "non-smoking tables" in the place, they don't get my business anymore now that I have a choice. You should vote with your en, dollars, euros, or whatever you use. Patronize the establishments that cater to your choices and snub the establishments that don't. In the long run a new balance of smoking vs. non-smoking restaurants will get established based on the customer's wishes.
0
grafton
One of the beneficial side effects to this book will be that I will be able to find restaurants that are not full of other people’s noisy kids. I just hate this melodramatic and emotive rubbish people come up with about their children. If the none smokers take this book as a warning of where not to go that leaves people who want to smoke free to do so without having some nanny like creature telling us about how we are harming their child. The result of my pleasure might be an early grave, but then might the same not be said of their pleasure? They are your children, you be responsible and protect them. Take them where I can’t harm them, please.
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trev93
Would be nice to have this book to lobby and send letters asking them to change to NON-smoking. Pressure these so called fine establishments to change their ways and the rest of the smaller lesser known places will follow suit. It's only a matter of time, why not speed up the process?
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kaminarioyaji
Waste of paper and completely missing a bigger sales opportunity. A book of "where you can`t smoke" would have saved paper for each book, and been bought by more people.
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Zenny11
Sarge.
All the "Gusto" in my area got "no smoking" corners. might be up tpo each indiviudal place.
Granted many had them before they got renamed from Bldy, etc to Gusto.
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mrsynik
Awesome!
I don't understand why people who've been in Japan still for so long jump up and down about people being able to smoke in restaurants and bars. It's the same as going to Greece and bitching about them smoking like chimneys. Deal with it or go somewhere that's non-smoking friendly like Australia or Canada.
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supernatural
Um, this. Are there really places in Tokyo that don't allow smoke?? I want to know where they are!!
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tkoind2
bicultural: "Is Starbucks outnumbered 1000 to 1 in Tokyo?"
By non-Starbucks cafes. Yes. Take a count and let us know mate. But I am sure Dotour and various other cafes far outnumber, collectively, the number of Starbucks. Try using an example that has real numberical advantage next time.
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LoveUSA
another useless book
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mindovermatter
Are they joking...?
It should be a hand book of where non-smokers can find a place to not have someone blowing smoke in their face...
You can't walk 5-meters down a sidewalk or street without being in the wake of someone's smoke contrails!
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bubzabub
I will smoke where and when I want.
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taiko666
I really doubt that.
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YongYang
Go to Kanagawa, NO Smoking in eateries.
-1
WMD
A cancer cafe and restaurant guide?? How moronic is that??
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Pukey2
That's what I thought, and indeed, my local McDonald's is smoke-free. However, the KFC has seats for both smokers and non-smokers, but the partition is so useless, a baby could walk right through it and still wouldn't hit its head on the partition. And yes, I could smell the smoke.
It should be a hand book of where non-smokers can find a place to not have someone blowing smoke in their face...
The title of the book makes it sound as if there are only a small number of restaurants where one can smoke. In fact, I'd say restaurants where you can eat without the threat of tobacco smell are in the minority.
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tmarie
Wish there was one for non-smoking places - and non kids! They would sell well!
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Piglet
As somebody wrote: "Having smoking and no-smoking sections in a restaurant is like having a peeing and no-peeing sections in a swimming pool" Smoking sections should be physically separated from non-smoking sections, otherwise you can indeed consider the restaurant as fully non-smoking.
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paul1
For non-smoking places please have a look at this internet database. It's very useful for finding non-smoking places by district or genre. It's in Japanese though so great if you can read it but otherwise a local friend might help http://www.kinen-style.com/
0
Wakarimasen
lots of non-smoking places - all the good FRench and Italian restaurants.... but expensive so plenty of the Jonathan and royal Host users on this site won't go.
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