While watching an episode of the anime Fooly Cooly a while back, I saw a scene where someone was smoking a cigarette with some writing on it. My roomate said that in Japan people frequently write fortunes on their cigs, and supposedly if you smoke it the fortunes come true.
The idea behind it I like, because its a cool contrast to our belief that every cigarette you smoke takes a day off of your life. Would you accept a little luck your way if it meant a day off your life? I don’t know…but it’s fun to think about.
So I look on Yahoo and google to see if I can’t confirm this. So far all I’ve been able to find are references to other anime shows where “cool” characters have done this as well.
Seeing as how I’m not finding anything more reliable than hearsay to this quirky little idea, I’m looking to the SDMB for the Straight Dope. What is the deal behind writing on cigarettes? Is it done often? And why is it done?
I’ve been in Japan eight years and I’ve never seen or heard of this practice.
I searched a bit and the only reference I could find was one guy’s blog that said that lately he’d gotten into the habit of writing stuff on his cigarettes. He got the idea by watching… Fooly Cooly.
About the only positive thing I can say about smoking in Japan is that there is some brand of cigarettes that doesn’t smell like ass, that still is relatively regularly smoked.
It sounds like a great revenue generator for the cigarette manufacturers. If people will only smoke the cigs with good fortunes, that means they are throwing out a lot of unused cigarettes.