Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

*minor spoilers ahead*

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is the first book I have read by a Japanese author and is a nice refreshing read. The book consists of four short stories belonging to the fantasy fiction genre about a café in Japan called Funiculi Funicula. Urban legend has it that in this café that you can travel back in time, as well as forwards.

I enjoyed the format of this book as you can experience everything the café has to offer as well as the regular people who visit the café. I loved learning about the different rules with going back in time, albeit there were so many. For example, there is only one chair in the café that will allow one individual to go back in time. Once in this chair, you cannot leave otherwise you will forcefully be brought to the present. As you are restricted to this chair, you can only meet people in the past who have already visited the café. If waiting for this specific chair, you cannot remove somebody who is already sitting there otherwise you will be cursed. Most importantly, you must drink the coffee before it gets cold. If this happens, you will be left as a ghost in the previous time that you visited.

‘The first rule was: ‘The only people you can meet while in the past are those who have visited the café … There is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present.’

Before the Coffee Gets Cold., p14

The most intriguing factor in this book is that although this café can allow people to travel in time, it is made very clear that the present will not change despite any changes made to the past. This raises the question as to why so many people still commit to making changes when visiting the past. We learn from these four short stories about how important these experiences are even though events in the present and future have not changed. It was interesting to see how people’s behaviour change after this encounter and as a result, this does subtly change the present and future in some way, even if the timeline of events remains the same.

The first story introduces the rules of the café to a woman named Fumiko who had not believed that time travel was possible in this café but now wants to go back in time to help a situation with her boyfriend. The second story is focused on a man named Fusagi who was introduced in the first story and his battle with Alzheimer’s and the effect this has on his wife. The third story is based on the fragile relationship of two sisters and the final story is about a mother and daughter. I did find the fourth story to be a little rushed and I would have liked for this to have been explored further. However, Kawaguchi should be credited with how all the characters in Before the Coffee Gets Cold are closely linked and are introduced and developed in the other stories.

Overall, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is an easy to read book that is a gentle introduction to the world of time travel. The overall story is quite simple and as it is always set within the café, there is not much else to be discussed in terms of the setting. As it is set in Japan, I sometimes struggled to remember the character’s names as I am unfamiliar with Japanese names. Luckily these characters link together and come up within each short story and so you can quickly pick up who is who again. There is also the second book in this series called Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café that I have already added to my wishlist as I enjoyed the first one so much.

4/5 stars