The Cigarette Ad

I think it's important to start this post by saying I'm not a smoker. I've never smoked -- never even tried the stuff. The picture of the blackened smoker's lungs scared me in middle school. John, however, is the occasional smoker who may have a cigarette when the time is right. The time was especially right on Wednesday night at the Snow Festival after he tried a few 100 yen sake shots. To be fair, the sake was all from the Hokkaido/Sapporo area, so it was really neat to see all the companies represented. I sadly didn't get to try any sake as I'm currently on this healthy 30-day diet challenge that calls for no alcohol...anyway, I'm babbling off topic...

We decided to duck into a smoker's area at the Snow Festival. I don't care much for second-hand smoke (who does), but I dipped into the smoker's tent as well to stand near a warm heater. We were quickly ushered into the tent, down a small entryway and into a large dome. In the dome, we were greeted by women with iPads ready to take your demographic information and iPads lining the wall where you could play an adventure game and win a prize.

I will never ceased to be amazed at the amount of money cigarette companies dump into advertising in Japan. Maybe my surprise is because I'm from the US where cigarette advertisement is highly regulated, if not almost completely banned. It should be noted that Philip-Morris was the company that sponsored this tent.

Anyway, the whole point of this too long post is to say this little story: After we decided to exit the tent, we were greeted by an enthusiastic camera crew, a cityscape backdrop and a convertible Mercedes. They asked if we wanted to take a picture "driving" the Mercedes......duh, of course we did. The only catch was we had to advertise their cigarettes in the process. We did such a good job of looking great, sophisticated and not at all like real heavy smokers that we were applauded when they were finished with the shoot. Other people had taken pictures before us and were not applauded.....so....it was strange.

I think the picture actually came out really great, although I wish I was holding a kitten or something instead of a pack of cigarettes....