Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
There is a café in Tokyo that has been selling expertly prepared coffee for more than a century in a tiny back lane. According to local lore, this shop provides the opportunity to travel back in time in addition to coffee. Four clients stop by the café over the course of one summer, hoping to go there. However, there are regulations that must be followed when time travel is involved. Most importantly, the journey can only go on for as long as the coffee is warm.
Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling book examines the age-old question: What would you change if you could go back in time? It is heartwarming, sad, mysterious, and deliciously offbeat.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
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A really strange tiny café called Funiculi Funicula is operated by Nagare and Kei and manned by Kazu. The location is highly unique; it is not air-conditioned but is always cool, and it has three elaborate clocks with three separate time displays. Is it the drip coffee, the constant mocha, or… just one chair at one table?
Customers have the opportunity to go back in time in a small, obscure Japanese cafe for the duration it takes for their hot coffee to become cold. Nothing more or less. Also, you are only permitted to attend the cafe on days when you have already been there. They must have been present at the same moment if there is someone you want to speak with. The devoted team will seriously outline the additional “rules.”
In this bestselling Japanese book, which is set in a tiny, unremarkable subterranean café in the heart of Tokyo, these are the laws of time travel. Despite the frequently awkward translation, it’s a unique and captivating read. The patrons and staff of the café are unique and unusual people who provide a fascinating window into Japanese culture, at least for Foreigners. The simplicity of the four-time travellers’ tales, each of which is driven by feelings of guilt or remorse, is alluring.
In Tokyo, there is a cafe that has been providing brewed coffee for more than a century. But, this coffee shop gives its clients a one-of-a-kind opportunity: The Chance Of Time Travel with T&D. Absolutely, subject to the Terms & Conditions.
Customers must sit in a specific seat, they are not allowed to leave the cafe, and they must return to the present before the coffee becomes cold. If they disobey any of these restrictions, it has a dangerous effect, and many people give up the idea of doing it altogether.
The book is actually made up of four distinct short stories using the same characters. The stories are quite emotive, propelled by the unique qualities of the café, despite the prose being minimal, impersonal, and emotionless.
The lovers, husband and wife, sisters, and mother and child are the four main characters of this book. Despite being aware of the strange rules and their repercussions, each of them hopes to take advantage of the cafe’s time-travelling offer in order to confront the ex-lover, receive a letter from their husband whose memory is fading, see their sister for the last time, and meet the daughter they never had the chance to meet.
