When you are engulfed in flames - By David Sedaris Page 0,88

pictures that accompanied them: “I carry a 700-degree fire in my hand with people walking all around me!” “Before I pass gas, I look behind me, but I don’t bother when I’m smoking.” “A lit cigarette is held at the height of a child’s face.”

All of the messages were related to civics. Smoking leads to litter. Smoking can possibly burn or partially blind those around you. There was none of the finger wagging you see in America, none of the “shouldn’t you know better?” and the “how could you?” admonitions that ultimately ignite more cigarettes than they extinguish.

When it came to restrictions, Japan was just the opposite of everywhere else. Instead of sending its smokers outdoors, it herded them inside where there was money to be made. In coffee shops and restaurants, in cabs and offices and hotel rooms, life was like a black-and-white movie. Compared to the United States, it was shocking, but compared to France it seemed fairly normal, the most telling difference being the warning labels on the sides of the packs. In France they read, “SMOKING WILL KILL YOU,” the letters so big they can be read from space. In Japan both the writing and the message were more discreet: “Be careful of how much you smoke so as not to damage your health.”

There was no mention of cancer or emphysema and certainly no pictures of diseased organs. They do that in Canada, and while I don’t know that it encourages people to quit, I do know that it makes for one ugly package.

What with all the indoor smoking, Japan was something of a throwback. It might seem the place to start rather than stop, but when I finally thought of quitting, I thought of Tokyo. Its foreignness would take me out of myself, I hoped, and give me something to concentrate on besides my own suffering.

Nine

We decided on Tokyo in early November, and before I could back out, Hugh found us an apartment in the neighborhood of Minato-ku. The building was a high-rise, and most of the tenants were short term. The real estate agent sent pictures, and I viewed them with mixed feelings. Tokyo I was excited about, but the idea of not smoking — of actually going through with this — made me a little sick. The longest I’d ever gone without a cigarette was twelve hours, but that was on an airplane so it probably didn’t count.

On an average day I’d smoke around a pack and a half, more if I was drunk or on drugs, and more still if I was up all night, working against a deadline. The next morning I’d have what amounted to a nicotine hangover, my head all stuffy, my tongue like some filthy sandal crammed into my mouth — not that it prevented me from starting all over again the moment I got out of bed. I used to wait until I had a cup of coffee in my hand, but by the early 1990s, that had gone by the wayside. The only rule now was that I had to be awake.

In preparing myself to quit, I started looking at this or that individual cigarette, wondering why I’d lit it in the first place. Some you just flat-out need — the ones you reach for after leaving the dentist’s office or the movie theater — but others were smoked as a kind of hedge. “Only if I light this will my bus appear,” I’d tell myself. “Only if I light this will the ATM give me small bills.” There were cigarettes lit because the phone was ringing, because the doorbell was ringing, even a passing ambulance was an excuse. There would certainly be bells and sirens in Tokyo, but I doubted that anyone would come to our door. What with the time difference, I wasn’t expecting many calls either. When not panicking, I could sometimes congratulate myself on what was actually a pretty decent plan.

Ten

In the summer of 2006, shortly before our three-day trip to Tokyo, I bought a Japanese-language CD. It was just the basics: “Good morning,” “May I have a fork?” that type of thing. The person giving the English translation spoke at a normal pace, but the one speaking Japanese, a woman, was remarkably slow and hesitant. “Koooonniiiichiii waaa,” she’d say. “Ooooohaaaayooooo goooooo . . . zaimasssssuuu.” I memorized everything she said and arrived in Japan feeling pretty good about myself. A bellman escorted Hugh and me to our hotel room and, without