Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a book about a desire most of us have felt at least once: the wish to return to the past.
In Tokyo, there is a café where people can travel back in time. The rules are strict and detailed, limiting who dares to try. Still, some accept the challenge and sit down in that chair.
The book unfolds through several stories of people who travel back in time. Each has a different reason. Regret, love, words left unsaid, questions that refuse to disappear.
Japanese writing often carries many layers, and this story is no exception. It is not truly about a café or time travel. For me, it is about something more subtle and more powerful: the idea that the present can shift without rewriting the past.
No one who travels back changes their reality. Everything remains exactly the same. Yet each person returns with relief. By seeing the turning point more clearly, they understand what led them there. That clarity changes their attitude toward the present, and suddenly it feels lighter.
In truth, most of them could have reached the same understanding without time travel. The exception, for me, is the final story about the photograph and the girl. That one lingers differently.
I also noticed something curious: in each story, the coffee cools at a different pace. In the first, it cools almost instantly. In others, lunch is finished before the coffee even begins to cool. Time behaves strangely, even within the same rules.
The book is written in a distinctly Japanese style. The rules are repeated again and again, almost ritualistically. As someone who lived in Japan for 6 years, I had flashbacks. Because this is exactly how people behave in Japan, if there are rules, they will always be remained.
For me, this book is less about changing the past and more about daring to look at it directly. Sometimes clarity is enough.
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