Sunday, April 19, 2009

You'd think everyone here smoked weed..


..by the number of marijuana leafs around. From jackets to air fresheners to car decals, representations of the leaf are ridiculously prominent not only in Tokyo, but also in the smaller, rural towns.

I wouldn't have thought twice about it were it not for the fact that marijuana is highly illegal in Japan. If you get caught with it, you will get in serious trouble. Just ask Paul McCartney.

So with that, I was definitely surprised by how ubiquitous the leaf was. After talking with a few people, I found out why: people associate the image more with Reggae and Dancehall (which is HUGE here) than marijuana itself. That said, I'm sure the more-illicit association isn't completely foreign...

2 comments:

  1. So are there Dance Halls out there in Japan???
    -King T

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  2. Yeah, it's really big here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULoz21BcHs

    I was looking at party fliers in Shibuya and nearly everyone was a dancehall party. Golden Week is going to be like Spring Break in the Islands

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