When I first came to Japan in 1986, it was a smoker's paradise. Cigarettes were extremely cheap, and basically, everybody was smoking everywhere. In the early 1990ies, the tide started to turn against smokers. Bans were introduced in stations and on platforms, in the beginning not without frictions (some of the disputes between non-smokers and smokers who did not observe the ban even ended lethally!). Today, cigarettes are still less than half the price of the EU, but smoking has been banned in many public places (in Shinjuku it is even prohibited to smoke in the streets). However, as Japan still is a consensus-based society, somewhere, there are corners or rooms where smokers can wallow in vice. Not each of these is sa cozy as this smokers's room in the train station of Toba, though. (The poster on the wall might be interpreted as "If you continue to smoke, you might find yourself in heaven sooner than would like to be...")