The Unbearable Joy of Sitting Alone in a Café

Summary

It’s contradictory to sit alone in a café. It’s against the reason cafés exist. They are designed as meeting spaces. There is no table with a single chair. Even the ones placed right by the window with high seating are big tables with many chairs. Cafés are community spaces. Most go there to see their loved ones, friends, or colleagues. You find only a few people sitting alone. Most are buried in their laptops, working hard to make a living in their own worlds, whatever world they have. I rarely do that. When I took time off from work, I chose a staycation. Unlike most of my friends, who visited Japan in 2025. When I heard their experiences, I was jealous. When I told them my staycation plans of doing nothing for four weeks, they were jealous. While off work, I wanted to slow time down as much as I could. The best way to freeze time, I read somewhere, is to get a dog. Luckily, I have one already. So, I took long walks with my dog. What used to feel like 10 minutes between breakfast and lunch while working became a full-blown day. Even though I was spending two hours walking my dog instead of a 30-40 minute rush, it felt like an eternity. A peaceful eternity. On the second day, I decided to leave my phone at home, so I lived those two hours to the fullest. I didn’t take any device that could connect me to the internet or to other people. I was nervous. But all the anxiety evaporated after 30 minutes. I felt free, so to speak. It wasn’t that nobody could reach out to me that felt like an escape; it was that I couldn’t reach out to anyone or anything that caused the turmoil. I had no possibility to text anyone. No possibility to watch or read. No chance to look up anything to fulfill my curiosity. My mind was alone after a long time. There were a few moments I put my hand into my pocket to take out my phone to look up something I was curious about. My phone wasn’t there. I smiled. Every. Single. Time. On the second day, I randomly walked into a neighborhood café. I ord...