The Cafe That Transports You Back in Time

What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years.

But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to:

• confront the man who left them;
• receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s;
• to see their sister one last time;
• and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

I found this book the same way I found most of the books I’ve been reading this year: through Jack Edwards’ Youtube channel.

He described it as “the biggest chef’s kiss of all time” and I knew right away that I had to read it.

And man, was he right.

This book was so beautiful and emotional. It left me a wreck.

I felt depressed and hopeful at the same time. I didn’t even know that was possible.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a beautifully written book about grief, hope, relationships, and the choices we make in life.

It hooked me from the very first page.

Definitely a new favorite. Maybe even my absolute favorite of this year.

This book begs the question: if you could travel in time, would you change anything, or do anything differently?

We usually say things like “if I could go back in time I would do it all differently”.

But would you really?

If you were given that opportunity, would you be capable of doing what you were too afraid to do the first time? Say what you couldn’t say? Be what you couldn’t be?

This book makes you question your choices and how you see life.

But more than just making you question your past choices, it also makes you question the reasons behind your choices.

One of the rules of this time-traveling café is that no matter how hard one tries while back in the past, one cannot change the present.

If you could travel in time but nothing in the present would change no matter how much you tried, would you still do it?

At first, this didn’t make sense to me. Like the characters in the book, I questioned what was the point of traveling to the past if you couldn't change the present.

But this book is not just about traveling in time. Is about relationships.

The book is divided in 4 parts: the lovers, husband and wife, the sisters, and mother and daughter.

The characters in this book travel in time to connect with lost loved ones. People that they cannot meet in the present.

One character travels to the past to confront the man who left her.

Another to receive a letter from her husband that has Alzheimer’s.

Another to see her sister one last time.

And the last one, to meet the daughter she never got the chance to know.

But no matter what they do or say, nothing in the present changes.

So you see these characters mostly just trying to find a way to deal with their grief, sadness, anxiety, and anguish.

“No matter what difficulties people face, they will always have the strength to overcome them. It just takes heart. And if the chair can change someone’s heart, it clearly has its purpose.”

Final Thoughts

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a beautifully written book about grief, hope, relationships, and the choices we make in life.

I empathized with the characters and felt for them.

This book is an emotionally beautiful story and touched me so deeply that will stay with me forever.

I recommend it to everyone. It’s a book everyone should read at least once in their lives.

If you’re interested in reading this book, get it here.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve read this book and what you think of it. Did you enjoy it?

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