b'Cafes offer up this unique third space - not home, nor work - for people to be private in a public space. Merry White, professor of Anthropology at Boston University, studies just this: cafes and cafe culture, but in Japan. Her book, Coffee Life in Japan, \\u201cpart ethnography, part memoir\\u201d, traces Japan\\u2019s cafe\\u2019s society over the past century and a half.'