The bizarre Japanese bar, Hitori, in Tokyo where customers are only allowed in if they come alone

This Tokyo bar has a bizarre admissions policy – you’re only allowed in if you come alone.

But the policy doesn’t appear to dull the atmosphere, with a local news reporter who visited recently finding out that it’s a great place to make new friends.

The bar, called Hitori, is in the Japanese capital’s Shinjuku district, which is known for its vibrant nightlife.

Patrons wanting a tipple at the establishment are greeted at the front door with a sign telling them the bar is ‘limited to parties of one’. 

The idea is that because all of the customers are there by themselves, they engage in conversation with people they might not usually talk to.

All drinks in the bar are priced at 1,000 yen (£7/$9) and it is open each night from 7pm.

It has space for just 17 customers at any one time.

Reporter Mariko, who works for Sora News 24, headed to the bar recently and imagined it would be ‘gloomy and oppressively silent’.

The bar, pictured, is in the Japanese capital’s Shinjuku district, which is known for its vibrant nightlife

Buzzy: Crowds thronging in the brightly lit Shinjuku district

But when she entered, she said that the bartender ushered her to a seat and before long she was chatting to the other customers about how they found out about the bar.

Many of the customers that night told her they like the bar as the set-up encourages them to talk to different people. It’s an ‘easy-going and fun’ place, was the conclusion.

At the end of her visit she said that she didn’t feel like she’d spent much time really alone at all, ‘because of how kind and inclusive everyone was’.

The establishment has been open for a year and the owner says he ‘wants it to be a bar that offers customers a fun chance to meet new people’.