"A solitary cloud wafted by the wind." Thus the 17th-century wandering haiku poet Matsuo Basho described himself. Not an ordained priest, he nonetheless wore priestly garb on his journeys and was steeped in the principles of Zen Buddhism, among which solitude ranks high. Japan's days as a Zen country are long past, but might solitude be staging a comeback? Spa! magazine for one thinks it might be, though neither Zen nor poetry figure conspicuously in it. What does is a new sense that it's rather fun to be alone.

Away with the melancholy connotations of loneliness! They had their place back when companionship was easy. A person had family, friends, a community, colleagues, almost as a matter of course. To venture alone into public haunts was more or less to confess that you — you alone — had none of these. Unless you were a poet or a monk, that was a painful admission. Better to stay home, where no one would see you, stare at you, exasperate you with a stranger's condescending pity.

But times have changed, society has moved on, and the solitary individual — unmarried and alone in the vast impersonal urban hive — is no longer an anomaly but a fairly representative type. It's only fitting that he or she acquire confidence, and that is what Spa! sees happening. There's even a new word to describe the phenomenon — botchi. Formerly it came exclusively coupled with the word hitori (alone). Hitoribotchi means pathetically lonely. Botchi means alone and proud of it.