Ichiko Aoba takes her seat at an old-fashioned coffee house in Tokyo's Shibuya district, and places a sketchpad and a plump pouch of rolling tobacco on the table. During the hour-long conversation that follows, the tobacco goes untouched, but the sketchpad gets a thorough workout. As she talks, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter reflexively scribbles drawings and kanji characters to elucidate what she's saying, the way a university lecturer might.