I sit alone in cafes all the time, for many reasons. I don’t feel particularly joyful about it nor weird. I just do it to take a break and have something to drink, or wait for someone or something. Often I don’t look at my phone at all. That doesn’t feel weird either, or rebellious, or whatever the author experiences.
I don’t understand the post at all.
I’d have gone to Japan. I’ve been to Japan, it’s awesome.
When you're so addicted to checking at your phone (like me and many others), it does feel weird to sit and not look at it.
I say this to help you understand, nothing more.
Two people can go to the exact same venue, do the exact same things, and have radically different experiences because of how our different internal worlds collide with that same external world.
And a further part of the magic of being human is that we're then able to share those experiences with each other. I wouldn't want to diminish someone else's experience of a place simply because I didn't have that same experience.