In Japan the really hip kids always party alone

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.