Tokyo is home to some of the world's more bizarre museums, including ones devoted to such odd subjects as washing machines, curry, kites and parasites. The latest addition to this outre melange is the Mobile Ashtray Museum.
While many of these wacky establishments are little more than disused workshops turned over to showcasing a private collection or a manufacturer's products from the past, MAM, as it trendily calls itself, seems to be little more than a campaign by Japan Tobacco (JT), the world's third-largest cigarette-maker, to push portable ashtrays and, by extension, a landscape unblemished by discarded cigarette butts.
Japan, a land hardly renowned for its championing of individual freedoms, is still something of a smokers' paradise compared to other industrialized nations, where tobacco is rapidly becoming a dirty word. Yet, though there are "smoking points" on the platforms of train stations, and it is still OK to puff away in most taxis, restaurants, bars and cafes, that is surely all set to change -- but not anytime soon if JT can help it.
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