A young woman sits alone in a café sipping tea and reading a book. She pauses briefly to scribble in a nearby notepad before showing her words to a passing café worker: "Where are the toilets please?" This is a familiar scenario in Tokyo's so-called "silent cafés", spaces which appear at first glance to be conventional cafés but where customers are not allowed to speak, communicating instead by writing in notepads.A growing number of "silent cafés" - with self-imposed chat bans - are opening across the capital, attracting a steady stream of solo Tokyoites keen to swap the pressure-cooker pace of urban life for solitary silence.The concept taps into a rising desire among young Japanese to be alone, a situation fuelled by economic uncertainty, a shift in traditional family support structures and growing social isolation.There are even silent discos, where participants dance alone wearing wireless headphones connected to the DJ, to products such as small desk tents designed for conversation-free privacy in the office.At the more unusual end of the spectrum, one Kyoto company offers single women the opportunity to have a "one-woman wedding", complete with white dress and ceremony, but no groom. ..