For those readers who aren't already aware, tomorrow I'm flying back to Japan. This past spring I applied for and was awarded the Robert C Bates Fellowship for Summer Research from Yale, and I'll be using the next six weeks to conduct anthropological research for my senior thesis in East Asian Studies. Explaining that I'm conducting research is the simple part. The more difficult part is my attempt to explain exactly what I'm researching. The short answer is that I'm going to be studying independent coffee shops and the role they play as a "third space" in the lives of their customers. Do people use them as social escapes? Or social spaces? Do people prefer to come in groups, or by themselves?How are coffee shops different than other "third spaces"? More specifically, I want to see if men view and use coffee shops differently than women do. (And given the rather distinct divides in social expectations for men and women contrasted with the c...