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Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi


 
Before the coffee gets cold



What would you change if you could travel back in time?Down a small alleyway in the heart of Tokyo, there’s an underground café that’s been serving carefully brewed coffee for over a hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers its customers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.

The rules, however, are far from simple: you must sit in one particular seat, and you can’t venture outside the café, nor can you change the present. And, most important, you only have the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee—or risk getting stuck forever.

Throughout one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of traveling to another time: a heartbroken lover looking for closure, a nurse with a mysterious letter from her husband, a waitress hoping to say one last goodbye and a mother whose child she may never get the chance to know.

Heartwarming, wistful and delightfully quirky, Before the Coffee Gets Cold explores the intersecting lives of four women who come together in one extraordinary café, where the service may not be quick, but the opportunities are endless.

***

Title: Before the Coffee Get Cold
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Published Year : 2015
Original Language: Japanese
Book Language: English
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy (Travel Time), Romance



I might be on the streak to read unconventional Japanese Story, after Mirai and now Before the Coffee Gets Cold. Mirai supposedly was written for a movie script meanwhile Before the Coffee Gets Cold supposedly was written for a play.

Nevertheless, I can put aside the too-detail description in the book, and swam into the beauty of Japanese Writing.

Before the Coffee Get Cold is a story about a small cafe in the basement nestled between the office buildings in Tokyo.  There is one thing particularly different about the cafe, that it can transport people to the past, or the future.

But unlike any conventional travel time whereas there is an agent popped up to guide you, The Cafe, named Funicula Funiculi, has a specific set of rules before people agree to time travel. 

First, the future cannot be changed, whatever happens. This to avoid the butterfly effect that usually brought by the time-traveler. Second, you can only be traveling to a specific time at the specific chair that you just sat before traveling. Third, you can only travel and go back to the present before the coffee gets cold- so it is just several minutes.  

Those sets of rules bring a lot of consequences that people saw it as bothersome. You need to visit the cafe with the person you want to meet in the past. And most over, you need to rethink what the objective of time travel if it is not to change the present or future.

Not finished yet, there is only one shot in a day to time travel when a ghost left her seat vacant to go to the toilet. No one knew when the Ghost will get up from the seat and go to the toilet.

A long time ago, people queued to do the time travel in the cafe, but after hearing the complicated rules, they changed mind. 

The cafe is vacant, but there is always a customer who read the news about Cafe time travel ability and want to try out.

The first customer is Fumiko, a beautiful businesswoman who just left by her boyfriend a few days ago in the cafe. She read the article and want to try out, even after considering the point to not change the future. 

Barely patience waiting for the Ghost left the seat, Fumiko finally travels time and met the boyfriend just before they are saying goodbye.

And there is Hirai, an eccentric pub owner that wants to travel back to the past when she was hiding in the cafe to avoid meeting her sister.

Also Kohtake, a nurse that wants to travel time because she wants to read a letter from her Alzheimer-husband.

The last is the wife of Cafe Manager, Kei that wants to travel in the future to meet her daughter.

The story of 4 women are intertwined and transform into a beautiful story that fulfills human's imagination, how if we have one last chance to undo our mistake or fear in the past?

The complicated rule is consciously set by the Author to make the story more realistic, that human can easily phantom.

My favorite story is Kohtake that also brought a tear to my eyes.

Well, it is not conventional Japanese-reading, but I love the simplicity and delicacy of the story that warmed my heart. 

It also brings me a question, if I were able to travel time, which points of life that I need to undo?





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