Tales from the Cafe: 2 (Before the Coffee Gets Cold)

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The changes in the café are satisfying.While reading this book,you will feel that you are a part of the character’s happiness and sorrow.Kazu’s life is more elaborately depicted here too. Also, why was there not ONE man- NOT A SINGLE MAN who time traveled to fix things or made a sacrifice? It's all the women fixing blunders caused by others, feeling guilty, even dying for others. A woman waits for three years for her non-communicating boyfriend/ex. It's a free spirited woman tethering herself to a family inn she loathed. It's a woman sacrificing her life in pregnancy YET feeling guilty. Like- wtf woman?! You died so that child can live and you still feel guilty! We can never truly see into the hearts of others. When people get lost in their own worries, they can be blind to the feelings of those most important to them.” The first story feels so old fashioned, with a girl crying over being left by a guy and this just continues. I mean the geek boyfriend of a stunningly beautiful girl gets a job in the US (with a game studio of all things) and then his career is in her mind suddenly more accomplished than hers? She works in medical engineering for a listed firm; she is a manager and can supposedly speak 6 languages, but can’t even normally articulate her needs and opinion to him apparently? And then she realizes that happiness lies on waiting for her non-communicative boyfriend to return. The end. I find the characters not as engaging and interesting even though their stories sound interesting enough. Maybe their stories do not do much for me personally.

People tend to feel happy when spring arrives, especially after a cold winter. When spring begins, however, cannot be pinpointed to one particular moment. There is no one day that clearly marks when winter ends and spring begins. Spring hides inside winter. We notice it emerging with our eyes, our skin and other senses. We find it in new buds, a comfortable breeze and the warmth of the sun. It exists alongside winter.” When Kei said she wanted to go to the future to see whether she would have her child due to all the pregnancy-related complications she was having at that time, her husband Nagare argued strongly against her decision as he thought that if she went into the future and discovered that the child didn’t exist, the hope which is the inner strength that had been sustaining his wife until then would be destroyed. The author shows us that hope is one of the most important things in our life via these two characters.

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Kawaguchi offers a surface level exploration of the emotional lives of his time travellers. However, the novel delves deeper into the ceremony of coffee making. The cafe has a rich history as it first opened its doors in the late 19th century. Nagare uses a variety of coffee brewing methods including the ‘siphon method’ and the ‘hand-drip style’. Let's just say the cup of coffee was too cold for me and end it here for the more I write about it, the angrier I get. Women are not your incubator, please stop treating us like one. When you choose your UNBORN child over your wife, the apparent Love of your life, you essentially show her how replaceable she is.

In the second story a women just naturally sees herself as a nurse for her husband and is treated quite unappreciatively by him. This story did have heart and I am not going say much negative about this one. The second story, Husband and Wife, was much more promising, and it did end up making me cry. It was incredibly moving, and I will remember it for a long time into the future. TW: Death of sibling, life threatening pregnancy, death while giving birth, death of parent, Alzheimers, husband forgetting his wife.

A question that defies rational thought but the answer of which lies in the hearts of those who are grieving for the people they have lost, regretting all that was left unsaid, those experiencing guilt over past actions or words that haunt them and prevent them from leading their lives to the fullest and those who want to see their loved one(s) just one more time. But also in Japan it seems that being a ghost is pretty good - you can read books, drink coffee and you even need to go to the toilet - though admittedly only once a day - being dead in Japan seems a pretty minimal change of physical condition, this probably why Japan's population is ageing rapidly - too many people retiring to Japan in the hope of an active afterlife. The characters - Kei, Kazu, Nagare - all seemed like the same person and were basically interchangeable because their personalities were that indistinct and irrelevant. The Alzheimer’s storyline felt especially pointless - the wife wants to talk to her husband about the letter he wrote, that was handed to her in the present, that she refused to read, but she wants him to tell her about it in the past? Just read it in the present! And the future storyline - what, she just “knows” that she’s going to die in childbirth? Gimme a break.

I hate (HATE!!!!) or "personally do not like books" where women die because of a pregnancy. Let alone for a pregnancy. Especially on purpose. Especially in books written by men. It’s just not my cup of tea. The short novel arguably occupies a space known as ‘magic realism’ as Kawaguchi adds fantastical elements to the familiar space of the coffee shop. Before the Coffee Gets Cold also speaks to the modern fascination with time travel writing as popularised by H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine. As for repetitive, the book, while a novel, is in many ways really just four short stories that are essentially variations of the same set up and (to a degree at least) the same conclusion. When looking up the author I discovered that he was a play writer, which does not surprise me in the slightest. The book really is a play in novel format down to the entire book taking place in the same room (one of the time travel rules is that you can't leave your seat).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 . . . If it is not possible to change the present no matter how hard you try while in the past, then why bother?” Who wouldn’t want to time travel? Well, you probably wouldn’t if you had to follow these very precise, arbitrary and convoluted rules - yes, even more so than the usual! So the characters in this story can time travel but only to the relatively recent past and they have to sit in a specific seat at a specific table - which they can’t leave once they time travel, which means they can’t leave the cafe - and only for the duration it takes for a coffee to cool, after which you have to drink it down or else risk turning into a ghost forever burdened to haunt the cafe. Also nothing you do in the past can alter the present/future. Yay, so much whimsical fun… I do not know what happened with the first book. I couldn’t get into it even after trying again. I just had to give it up sixty percent into it every-time.