In Oct. 2003, City Hall designated the Tenjin and Hakata Station areas as no-smoking-while-walking zones, and the zones were expanded in 2008, but some say the number of people smoking in the zones remains high. In light of this criticism, the City has been monitoring the number of smokers in its 10 zones. In Nov. 2013, 58 people out of 32,534 (0.17%) were spotted smoking in a two-hour span, which is a vast improvement over the 3.1% recorded in the 2003 survey. In fiscal 2013, members of the City’s “manner brigade” issued 8,144 warnings to smoking pedestrians, who can be fined up to ¥20,000 if they fail to comply with requests to butt their cigarettes, but so far no fines have been levied. Society has come to view smoking more negatively, making it harder to people to smoke in public places, so complying with smoking etiquette is important. Nishinippon Shimbun 5/23
