Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

This first story, The Best Friend, has all the makings of a real tearjerker, with Gotaro being a sweet, sensitive soul who only wants what he believes to be best for his daughter. Gotaro’s guilt has reached breaking point, and he wants to record a message from his dead friend for her to watch on her wedding day.

She has no memory of her real dad and doesn’t even know that Gotaro isn’t her father. After his death, Gotaro raised the daughter he left behind. The first - and strongest - story in the book follows Gotaro, a man whose best friend died decades back. Just as in the first novel, customers visit the cafe now and again, having heard the rumours of the time-travel chair. But Kazu is always there, and her own story is gently told as the acts flow into one another. They have a sob story, something they’re searching for or an end to an unfinished narrative. We follow closely the life of Kazu, the cafe waitress with the sole power of sending customers back in time as she pours their coffee.Įach story focuses on a customer who is looking for something. In this follow-up novel, we return to the cafe and those who work there. Tales from the Cafe is exactly as sweet, as strong, as playful, sorrowful, touching, and awkward as Before the Coffee Gets Cold was. The concept of a cafe corner which sends people back in time is a bottomless well of narrative ideas, and Kawaguchi does a wonderful job of continuing to plunge its depths. Tales from the Cafe follows this exact same conceit, even down to the same four-act structure. In that short window, a customer may choose to take her seat and use it to travel back in time there, they can remain until the coffee gets cold. Once a day, she will leave her seat and visit the bathroom.

In this unassuming cafe there exists an unassuming table and chair, in which sits the not-so-unassuming ghost of a woman. Before the Coffee Gets Cold was a collection of four interwoven stories, all set in a single Tokyo cafe.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi