Rolling Tobacco in Japan?

Years ago a local newspaper on the Gold Coast featured a Japanese tourist guy who was touring Australia on a large Japanese motorcycle, who was then passing through that part of the country.
One of his comments quoted by the reporter was that one of his favorite things about Australia was the pouches of tobacco one could buy to roll their own cigarettes, such as "Drum" is one of the familiar iconic brands.
"Very good..No Can buy in Japan" he declared.
This struck me as very surprising, is or was it really true that smokers could not buy this kind of a product in Japan?
Only ready-made cigarettes?
This is a perfectly legal form of tobacconists purchase product in Australia-not to be confused with illegal rough tobacco "chop-chop" ..mostly illegal because it avoids Australia's very heavy tobacco taxation.

BTW, as Yul Brynnner said, "dont smoke..whatever you do, just don't smoke!"

Well, this is mostly, but not entirely true. If you look hard and long enough, you can find some tobacco shops in Tokyo (I know of only two, and I have looked around quite a lot) where you can find rolling tobacco. They even have the Drum brand. However, this Drum does not seem to be the same as what I am used to. In particular, all of the tobacco that I have found has only been of the dark, or "brun" variety. So, I have been working around this by importing some American Spirit tobacco to Japan and mixing it with what I find here.

I know exactly what the Japanese tourist is talking about. I felt the same when I first traveled around Europe in the 80s.

As mentioned, first of all, unrolled tabacco can be found in Japan, but not at every shop around your corner. Secondly, and most importantly, you can hardly find tabacco paper to roll these tabacco by yourself with. I suppose the unrolled tabacco is sold mainly to please pipe users or something, I don't know. Anyway, you really can't find paper, so I would buy loads of paper in Europe and just enjoy them until I've used them all.

So the majority of Japanese smokers end up not rolling a single cigarette in their lives. It just doesn't occur to them that you have the choice to roll your own and we, including myself, just don't have the technique to roll them well.

Another thing I noticed in Europe in the 80s (or at least especially in London. And I've never been to Australia) is that people seem to try to spend very little money on cigarettes. A stranger would come up to you and ask for one cigarette from your package. Now, this never happens in Japan. Someone might ask if (s)he can borrow your lighter, but will not ask if (s)he can have one piece of cigarette from you for free. This probably owes to the fact that cigarette prices in Europe were always pretty high.

On the contrary, I suppose the Japanese tabacco industry and its consumers hardly thought that it is worth selling/buying unrolled tabacco when rolled cigarettes can be bought easily and reasonably.

But that was all in the 80s, anyway, when a lot of people including myself used to smoke. Nowadays, the trend is to not smoke. Plus cigarette tax has gotten very high over the years. A lot of younger people simply don't smoke, and the older generation can easily afford ready-rolled packs, only if they want to smoke that much despite the limiting of smoking areas in the modern society.

Hello Patrick. I have lived in Japan for five years and when I first came here I got friends to send me rolling tobacco from home as I could not find it.
When you look a little closer almost every small tobacconist will sell many varieties of tobacco, and even better is the pouches already contain a packet of rizlas(papers) within the plastic packaging. I never had any trouble finding these pouches and papers when I actually started looking. However now I am a non-smoker for the past year and much happier for it :)

I agree with Leea. The more you look, the more you will find. Papers are easier to find than the tobacco, but you often have to ask. Still, I haven't had any success finding anything but the dark tobacco. Not quite sure why.

My Japanese grandfather used to buy loose tobacco to use in a pipe. It smelled really great, even though it constantly annoyed my grandmother. It wasn't Drum brand, though, which is for cigarettes. My grandfather would also smoke 3 cigarettes a day, either outside in the small garden, or in the toilet which really annoyed my grandmother even more than the pipes. He smoked Peace brand which are SOOOOO strong.

Now I live in New York and cigarettes here are a little more than 100 dollars for a carton. Even if cigarettes if slowly getting more expensive in Japan, I stock up in duty free when I can.

Anyway, loose tobacco is not popular in Japan, nor is it in most places. I think there was a time in the past when it was maybe in American and Europe, but it's considered old fashioned. I have had the pleasure of trying a hand rolled cigarette with Drum tobacco and it tasted really nice, though.

But don't smoke kids :-) Filthy habit

I was in a bar in Osaka , actually and Irish pub and the guy sitting next to me was rolling and smoking his own cigarettes.
I don t know where he bought his supplies but there are plenty of small smoke shops around the cities.

Hi,
I just arrived Hiroshima last week and a bought some rolling tobacco in the tax-free shops in the airport and when i finaly arrived home i realized no paper was included in the box!

So i found this forum serching for smoking papers, becouse some japanese friends told me that no papers are found here :(

Does anyone know a place to buy them or you think i just have to buy them on-line?

Thx.

Ask for temaki tabako or shag tabako.
I.e.
In Osaka:
http://www.tabako-sakuranbo.co.jp/english/index.html
In Tokyo:
http://www.placer.co.jp/hand_rolled.html
Try "kiseru", a long smoking tube.