Posted by CP on 7/30/2001, 1:41 pm So we head down the arcade and walk by a Dou Tour coffee chop (national chain). It looks pretty dead so we continue looking for PH's place. We find it and it looks very promising on the second floor, which is the smoking section. We all get drinks, and I also get a piece of cheesecake. (PH jokes about me still being hungry after the Italian lunch, but I tell him it's kind of a habit of mine, so I can extend my stay just that little bit longer if need be.) We head upstairs and PH has gotten us three chairs around a huge, round communal table with a big, tall plant in the middle. It's fine with me, because it means all three of us should have some good angles for viewing. Oh, if you have your scorecards at home ;-), of the three of us I am on sitting on the left, PH is in the middle, and JIm is on the right. Around this huge round table are other smaller tables for two or three people, with lounge chairs. They are only one deep, meaning there is a continuous line of these smaller tables circling the big communal table. The window side, looking out over the arcade, is behind Jim and at my two o'clock more or less. Okay, now that our scorecards are filled in and ready for the game to start, on to the sightings! I'll post about three in particular; I hope Jim and PH will post about the same ones and maybe some others as well. The first one I'll tell you about (but maybe not first chronologically; as I said my brain overheated during the course of the day!), a middle-aged, short and pudgy couple walks in and sits down at the big table, the woman being right next to Jim on his right side or maybe with one empty chair between them, and the husband on the lady's right. We all notice the white ashtray and start to perk up. I want to tell PH that I'm surprised she put the ashtray in front of her instead of in front of her husband or between them, but I see both guys are kind of in a daze just looking at the ashtray so I don't bother ;-) Like I said, the lady is short and pudgy (but not a total dog, and middle-class looking), but the fact that she put the ashtray in front of her intrigues me if not the other guys as well. Then she ups the ante; she brings out not one but two, count 'em TWO, packs of Marlboro Reds from her purse and puts them on the left side of the ashtray. (And thus even farther from her husband than the ashtray.) Now all three of us guys are hooked and she wastes no time teasing us; she lights up pretty much right away, no-hands. PH immediatley comments that her exhales remind him of Park, the Korean lady in a couple of his videos at Oriental Smoke Palace. A kind of drifting exhale, but whereas with Park, who didn't really inhale much and let the exhale or whatever you want to call it go on continuously, this lady would take obvious and deep inhales and then exhale in drifting spurts. Her mouth might have been open the entire time of the exhale sequence, if I remember right, but she would still exhale in spurts. Guess it was her natural breathing sequence at that point and the fact that smoke still came out was just a testament to how deep her inhales were and perhaps how much lung capacity she carried. I think Jim lit up one of his Marlboro Reds soon thereafter ;-) Later they moved to a table by the windows. I think I saw the man finally take one of the packs of Marlboro Reds, much later, and smoke, but PH and Jim couldn't verify it later when we talked about it at another place, so maybe I was imagining things. At any rate, he certainly didn't smoke for the first thirty minutes or so that they were there, sitting at the communal table, while his wife was only too happy to smoke several Marlboro Reds. Gotta love it when the wife smokes more than the husband, especially a strong brand like Marlboro Reds. Okay, the second one I'll post on. It was either PH or Jim who picked it up on their radar first, but it was a tall, kind of big-boned mid-30s woman dressed in a black sleeveless number if I remember. She was behind me, about at my 7 o'clock, but PH and Jim could see enough of her and were giving me an indication I had to see her. She was with her husband (and who else, Jim, PH? A grade shool child or two?) Actually, I think it was Jim who said something like "It's not everyday you see a Japanese woman holding an infant and smoking." That got my attention bigtime, and not long after I just decided I was going to do a periscope check around the entire place just for the excuse to look directly behind me. (Surely I'm not the only one who does this, now am I? :-) I'll have to defer to Jim or PH to comment on her smoking, because I couldn't very well stare at her with her being directly behind me. But I did catch an inhale, while she had the baby cradled in one arm. Now the last one during that stop that I'll post about. A pair of 30ish women come in, both seem to be fairly tall. One in particular we all three take note of: she's dressed in red (a short-skirted dress if I remember right, or was it a red top only and a skirt of some other color?). She has nicely styled hair, kind of mid-length but all of it above collar level. She looks like a career woman as they are called in Japan, as opposed to an office lady who is on a totally different (and very discriminatory, salary-wise and otherwise) job track. She comes back with an ashtray to their table by the window, about at my 3 o'clock and thus kind of behind PH and Jim. She smoked what looked to be VS Menthol Lights, pulling them from a pink soft case if I remember right. She did no-hands lightups, inhaling very deeply for a VS smoker, and she had exhales with very thick smoke, a cone that started with thick smoke and continued with thick smoke until it reached about two meters in length. Seriously! PH can back me up on it. Her cheeks would cave in noticably on her inhales; I wonder if she was on a break from work or if that is the way she smokes all the time, even her free time. Oh, about PH. I felt sorry for him, not having a good view, so I told him I would tell him at some point when to look. So one time as I notice her about to inhale, I look towards the window (which, remember, looks down on the arcade), and I say something like, "Oh, look, there's George." Which gives PH and Jim a good excuse to look over towards this stunningly beautiful smoker (think Fujiwara Norika with light brown colored hair). After they have had a chance to see her exhale, I say something like, "Oh, that wasn't him." Ha ha. I said I would comment on three smokers, but I remember now a fourth that kind of stood out. She was a younger lady, maybe about 20 or 22. She was also sitting over by the windows, but at a table that all three of us had a decent view of. She smoked Marlboro Menthol full flavor, and every time she lit one up (and I think often on subsequent inhales, right PH, JIm?), she had a real pained expression on her face. I wondered out loud to PH if it was maybe the lighter fumes. Whatever, it certainly was interesting. Oh, just remembered another unusual sighting we had there. A girl of about 19 or 20 came in with her parents. They also sat at a table all three of us could see. The girl had an ashtray on her food tray, but the parents didn't. I just expected her to set it down in front of her father when they sat down (she between the parents), but she didn't. And, yes, as things turned out she was the only smoker of the three! Marlboro Menthol Lights or Marlboro Lights, I think. We all commented on how rare that was, a Japanese lady and especially a younger one smoking in front of her non-smoking parents. She was not shy about it at all, either. Looked kind of like a semmon gakko (specialty school, like fashion or hairstyling) type of girl, with kind of strawberry blonde colored hair. Well, gotta take a break. Will get to Part 3 later (tomorrow or after), but if you have any comments or questions now or anytime, fire away. And I hope PH and Jim get a chance to fill in details, correct any memory lapses I may have suffered, and talk about some of the women I couldn't see because of that damned plant in the middle of the table or because they were sitting behind me. Come on guys!
Too bring everybody back up to speed, the three of us had just finished eating at an Italian restaurant. We head back toward the shopping arcade. I show the two of them where there is a good bar for sightings later that evening (I had to head back at seven p.m.) Then we look for a coffee shop PH had described to me. I was almost certain I knew which one he was talking about, but when we walked by it he said, "No, that's not the one." Well, I haven't been to Hiroshima in about a year, so I wasn't totally surprised. And of course I was happy there was a new place to go for sightings.
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