Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Published by Picador/Pan Macmillan: London, 2019.
Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot, 2019.
Originally published in Japanese as Coffee Ga Samenai Uchini, 2015.

For the second time this year, I have been lent a book by a student to read (though a different student), and once again it is a book originally written in Japanese!

The similarities end there, however. Where No Longer Human was bleak and depressing, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is wistful, whimsical, melancholic and also somewhat sweet. It is also science fiction, with a hint of fantasy thrown in (there is a ghost, who can curse people; its not a big deal).

Author Kawaguchi has adapted the storyline of the book from a play that he wrote, and at times that previous format shows through. Characters speak their feelings out in order to give us context, even when the narration has already told us the relevant information, or will go on to do so. The book also keeps its one setting very strongly, although the set up helps this to not feel forced. We get four chapters/sections, each with a different focal character, and although there is some recurring characters throughout - particularly those individuals who work at the cafe - each section could easily be its own short story.

So, what is Before the Coffee Gets Cold actually about? Time travel. But, very limited time travel. Characters are informed ahead of time that they can only travel back (or forwards) in time within the cafe, that they will only be able to interact with people whom they know to have been in the cafe, that they must remain seated on the specific time travelling chair during their journey, and that they must also finish a cup of coffee before it gets cold, at which point they will return to the present. They are also informed that nothing they do will change the past.

It's a large set of rules, and raises the question why anyone would want to time travel given the limitations. And yet, Kawaguchi introduces four people that have a clear reason to do so, and even allows the time travelling journeys to have an ongoing, and (bitter)sweet outcome. It's quite clever writing in that sense.

There are times when the sentence structure meanders a bit from usual English phraseology, but from my vast experience of books translated from Japanese (two) this seems normal. The cultural norms of Japan also come through at times, adding an extra 'foreign' element to what is already a quite 'quirky' setting and theme.

Enjoyable.

Thanks, Sam!

Completed 13 December 2025.

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