Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s novel “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” was first published in Japan in 2015 and later translated into English by Geoffrey Trousselot and published by Picador in 2019.
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Book Name: Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Language: Japanese, English
Published: 2015
Summary
The novel is set in a small café called Funiculi Funicula in Tokyo, where customers have the opportunity to travel back to a time of their choosing, as long as they follow a long list of rules. The café has only one seat that allows time travel which is occupied by the ghost. The only way to use that seat for time travel is to use it when the ghost goes for a toilet break. Once a customer travels back in time, they can’t leave the seat. Only the people who have visited the cafe can be met in the past. Anything that has been done in the past would not change the present. Most importantly, the customer has to return to the present before their cup of coffee goes cold (around 1 hour).
The novel story is based on the café staff, notably barista Kazu, and four different customers.
The first customer is a businesswoman named Fumiko who tries to repair her relationship with her boyfriend after he left the country for a job in the United States. The second customer is a nurse named Kohtake who tries to find a letter her Alzheimer-stricken husband wrote. The third customer is a bar owner named Hirai who tries to talk to her sister whom she’s been avoiding. The fourth customer is one of the café co-owners named Kei who tries to go to the future to talk to her unborn daughter.
The novel explores themes of regret, missed opportunities, and the importance of living in the present. The novel that even after finding a way to time travel in the past to fix the mistakes, we should be focusing on making our present better.
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Regret is a major component of many of the novel’s storylines, and the novel uses its time travel premise to explore how self-reflection and personal action can help to overcome regret. Many of the characters have regrets, which time travel could potentially help them to retroactively remedy. However, the constraints around the café’s time travel seem to make such a process complicated or even impossible: “When you go back, no matter how hard you try, the present won’t change”
Thus, when characters travel back in time, they cannot impose retroactive changes that will alter the present. Instead, the travel trips help more as a second chance for the characters to look upon their past and gain new perspectives from the people in their lives and start making their present better. The characters are then able to take action in the present that will shape their futures in positive ways.
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My Opinion
Personally, I think Before The Coffee Gets Cold is an interesting novel that explores themes of regret and missed opportunities through its unique premise of time travel. It’s an emotional journey that leaves readers with an important message about living in and cherishing every moment. I would rate it 4.5 stars out of 5.
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