Letter: Smokers put to flight

sir: I was interested to read your article about smoking in Japan (8 November) but I fear the author, your former Japan correspondent Tim Jackson, is out of date.

I visited Japan in September this year, expecting to be overcome by tobacco fumes everywhere I went, and was pleasantly surprised. I was also surprised to be told that Japan Airlines' domestic flights are now all nonsmoking, which I found to be true on a flight I made from Tokyo to Fukuoka. I also noted that hardly anyone smoked on the flight from London to Tokyo, or back, although 90 per cent of the passengers were Japanese.

The only evidence of excessive smoking I met was the offer by every petrol pump attendant to clean our ashtray whenever we stopped to fill up.

Yours faithfully,

DAVID LEWIS

London, NW6