沉默咖啡馆在东京各处开张
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?"
一位年轻的女士独坐在咖啡馆里，正一边小口喝着茶一边看书。她停了一小下，在旁边的便签本上草草写上几个字，拿给路过的服务员看，上面写着：“请问洗手间在哪儿？”
This is a familiar scenario in Tokyo’s so-called "silent cafés", spaces which appear at first glance to be conventional cafes 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.
The phenomenon is not confined to coffee shops but covers everything from 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.