You don't have to be hip to enter Café Indépendants, but it helps. Located in the basement of the old Mainichi Shimbun Kyoto bureau, Indépendants is the kind of cafe frequented by the artsy set. There is a version of this cafe in every city all over the world. In Cork, where I grew up, that cafe was mostly populated by skaters, goths and loners working on the 50th draft of their first novel. In Kyoto, Indépendants is staffed by models and artists between jobs and frequented in the main by college students.