by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
A small café in Tokyo serves up more than just coffee and cake. Funiculi Funicula offers its customers a chance to visit the past, to a time of their choosing, but they must return to the café Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
As with most time travel opportunities, there are rules that the traveller must follow in addition to watching the temperature of the coffee. There is one seat from which the time travel occurs and the seat can only be taken when the regular occupant – a ghost – goes to the toilet. The time traveller must stay in the seat for the duration of the time travel and can only visit people who have been to the café. Lastly, and perhaps most significant is whatever happens in the visit will not change the present.
People come from all over to take advantage of the chance to time travel. In this first book in the café series, we meet the café owner, Kazu, and four visitors, each of whom have a desire to revisit a past event or have a last chat with someone special.
Fumiko wants to tell her boyfriend how she feels before he leaves the country; Kohtake is looking for reassurance from her husband who now has Alzheimers; Hirai needs to reconnect with her sister; and Kei switches up the travel to go to the future to speak with the child she is carrying. Kawaguchi brings each customer’s story to life in a wistful, dreamlike manner, which adds to the magic of this book. Additionally, the connection and care each customer has for each other is heartwarming.
Kawaguchi has continued the series in four sequels that follow the café owner, their friends and family along with old and new customers, allowing us to learn more about their own secrets and mysteries as the books progress.
For an enjoyable collection of vignettes that explore the age-old question of what you would choose to do or who you would meet one last time, if you could go back in time, pick up this book, a cup of coffee and enjoy the journey.
Other titles in this series are: Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café; Before Your Memory Fades; Before We Say Goodbye; Before We Forget Kindness.