Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi: Should You Read It?

What if you could sit across from someone from your past again?

Not to rewrite history.

Not to change what happened.

Not even to fix your mistakes.

Just to have one more conversation.

That is the quiet, heartbreaking question at the centre of Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

I finished reading this book about three weeks ago, and what stayed with me was not the time travel itself. It was the uncomfortable realization that most of us probably do not need a time machine.

We need a conversation we postponed.

A thank-you we never said.

An apology we never made.

A goodbye we never properly had.

And perhaps that is why this small Japanese novel has travelled so far beyond Japan.

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📚 Before You Decide: The Book at a Glance

Book	Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Author	Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Originally published	Japan, 2015
Original title	コーヒーが冷めないうちに
English translation	Geoffrey Trousselot
English publication	2019
Setting	A mysterious café in Tokyo
Genre	Magical realism / contemporary fiction
Core themes	Love, regret, grief, family, memory, forgiveness
Main hook	Time travel
Series	Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Reading experience	Short, emotional, reflective
Best for	Readers who enjoy quiet, philosophical stories

The English edition is published by Picador/Pan Macmillan, and the publisher describes the novel as the first book in a multi-million-copy bestselling series.

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🎯 My Quick Reader Decision

Should you read Before the Coffee Gets Cold?

Yes, if you enjoy:

• ❤️ Emotional stories about relationships
• ⏳ Time travel without complicated science fiction
• ☕ Cozy cafés and intimate settings
• 🧠 Stories that make you reflect on your own life
• 💔 Books about grief, regret and unfinished conversations
• 🌏 Japanese fiction and translated literature
• 🌱 Short books with a larger emotional idea
• 🕯️ Quiet, atmospheric storytelling

You may want to skip it if you want:

• 🚀 Fast-paced science fiction
• 🧩 Complex time-travel mechanics
• 🔥 Major plot twists
• ⚔️ Action or adventure
• 🏃 A story driven primarily by suspense
• 🧠 Highly complex prose

My verdict:

⭐ 4/5 for emotional impact

⭐ 4/5 for concept

⭐ 3.5/5 for character depth

⭐ 4/5 for readability

⭐ 4.5/5 for the questions it leaves behind

Overall: 4/5 ☕❤️

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☕ THE 30-SECOND DECISION

Read it if: you enjoy emotional, reflective stories about love, loss, family and regret.

Skip it if: you want fast-paced science fiction or time travel that changes history.

My rating: ⭐ 8.5/10

Best comparison: The Midnight Library

Reading experience: Emotional • Quiet • Bittersweet • Thought-provoking

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☕ What Is Before the Coffee Gets Cold About?

Hidden in a back alley in Tokyo is a small café called Funiculi Funicula.

It has been serving coffee for more than a century.

But there is something unusual about one particular seat.

Sit there, follow the café’s strange rules, and you can travel into the past.

There is one enormous catch:

You must return before your coffee gets cold.

And there are other rules.

You cannot leave the café.

You cannot change the present.

You can only meet people who have visited the café.

And no matter what happens during your journey, the present will remain the present.

The book follows four visitors who each have their own reason for wanting to travel back in time.

One wants to confront the man who left her.

Another wants to communicate with her husband.

Another wants to see her sister again.

And another wants to meet a daughter she never had the chance to know.

The publisher describes these four journeys as encounters involving love, Alzheimer’s, family estrangement and a daughter never met.

And that is where the book becomes much more than a story about time travel.

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🧭 The Big Question: What Would You Do If You Could Go Back?

This is where Kawaguchi’s concept becomes interesting.

Most time-travel stories ask:

What if you could change the past?

Before the Coffee Gets Cold asks something more intimate:

What if you couldn’t change it?

Imagine being given the opportunity to meet someone from your past while knowing that nothing you say will rewrite the future.

Would you still go?

That is the emotional engine of the book.

And I think this is one of the reasons the story works across cultures.

Whether you live in Tokyo, Toronto, London, Mumbai, New York, Nairobi or Melbourne, the emotional problem is familiar.

We all have unfinished conversations.

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❤️ The Four Stories That Drive the Book

The novel is structured around four emotional journeys.

1. 💔 The Woman Who Wants to Meet the Man Who Left Her

This story explores romantic regret.

The temptation is obvious:

If you could meet someone who left you, what would you say?

But the story gradually moves away from the fantasy of getting someone back.

Instead, it asks whether understanding can sometimes be more valuable than changing an outcome.

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2. 💌 The Woman Who Wants to Speak to Her Husband

This is one of the book’s more painful stories.

The emotional centre is memory, love and the devastating ways illness can affect relationships.

Kawaguchi uses the café’s supernatural premise to explore something very real:

How do we hold onto love when memory begins disappearing?

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3. 👭 The Woman Who Wants to See Her Sister Again

Family relationships can carry a different kind of regret.

Romantic relationships sometimes end.

Families can remain connected for decades while still carrying unresolved hurt.

This story asks what happens when someone is given one final opportunity to sit with the person they lost.

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4. 👶 The Woman Who Wants to Meet Her Daughter

This is perhaps the story that most clearly transforms the book’s time-travel concept into an emotional question.

What would you say to someone whose entire existence is connected to you, even though you never had the chance to know them?

The answer is not about altering destiny.

It is about connection.

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🧠 What Is the Book Really Trying to Say?

At first glance, Before the Coffee Gets Cold looks like a time-travel novel.

I don’t think it really is.

Time travel is the device.

Relationships are the story.

Regret is the fuel.

And acceptance is the destination.

The book repeatedly pushes us toward a simple but uncomfortable idea:

You cannot change what happened.

But you can change what that memory means to you.

That distinction gives the novel its emotional power.

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⏳ Why the Coffee Matters

The coffee is more than a gimmick.

It becomes a symbol of time itself.

Every cup has a beginning.

Every cup gets colder.

And eventually, the opportunity disappears.

That makes the café’s rule surprisingly philosophical.

We often behave as though time is unlimited.

We postpone conversations.

We delay apologies.

We assume there will be another birthday.

Another visit.

Another phone call.

Another opportunity.

But life rarely gives us a timetable.

The coffee does.

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🌏 Why Is Before the Coffee Gets Cold So Famous?

The book’s global success is fascinating because it did not begin as a conventional blockbuster novel.

It began as a stage play.

Kawaguchi originally wrote the story for theatre. The play won the Grand Prize at the Suginami Drama Festival, after which the concept was adapted into a novel.

That theatrical DNA is still visible in the novel.

One café.

A limited number of characters.

A small physical space.

A handful of emotionally intense conversations.

It is almost like watching several intimate plays unfold inside one room.

The story subsequently became an international bestseller and was translated into numerous languages. An Arab News Japan report noted that the novel had been translated into 32 languages by 2022.

The series has since grown considerably. Pan Macmillan currently lists six books in the series, including Tales from the Cafe, Before Your Memory Fades, Before We Say Goodbye, Before We Forget Kindness and Before I Knew I Loved You.

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🌟 Why Readers Around the World Connected With It

1. ☕ A Brilliantly Simple Premise

The entire concept can be explained in one sentence:

You can travel into the past, but only until your coffee gets cold.

That is extraordinarily easy to understand.

And memorable ideas travel well.

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2. ❤️ Universal Emotions

The characters are Japanese.

The café is Japanese.

The cultural setting is Japanese.

But the emotions are universal.

Love.

Loss.

Family.

Regret.

Forgiveness.

Loneliness.

The fear of losing someone.

The desire to say one more thing.

These emotions require no translation.

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3. 📱 It Is Extremely Shareable

The book naturally produces the kind of questions readers want to discuss online:

• Who would you meet if you could travel back?
• What would you say?
• Would you change anything?
• Would you visit someone who died?
• Would you rather change the past or understand it?

That makes the novel unusually well suited to book communities, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Goodreads and literary discussion.

Its emotional premise also fits the broader recent revival of visually appealing, comforting and emotionally resonant translated fiction.

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🎬 Before the Coffee Gets Cold in Movies and Screen Adaptations

The story did not remain confined to books.

The novel was adapted into the Japanese film ** Cafe Funiculi Funicula ** in 2018, starring Kasumi Arimura.

The story has therefore travelled through three forms:

🎭 Stage play → 📖 Novel → 🎬 Film

That is an important part of Kawaguchi’s story as a creator.

The original theatrical structure is arguably one reason the novel feels so contained and dialogue-driven.

There was also an announced television adaptation project in the United States involving SK Global and The Jackal Group, although readers should distinguish that development announcement from an actually released series.

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📚 Books You Should Read If You Loved It

This is where Before the Coffee Gets Cold becomes an excellent gateway book.

☕ If You Loved the Time-Travel Idea

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

The most obvious recommendation.

Both books use a fantastical premise to explore regret, choices and the lives we imagine we could have lived.

But they take different routes.

	Before the Coffee Gets Cold	The Midnight Library
⏳ Time	Past	Alternate lives
🎯 Focus	Relationships	Life choices
🏠 Setting	Café	Library
👥 Structure	Multiple stories	Primarily one protagonist
❤️ Core idea	Understanding the past	Understanding your life
🌱 Tone	Quiet & bittersweet	More philosophical & expansive

Libraries themselves frequently recommend the two as read-alikes for readers interested in time, choice and destiny.

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🐈 If You Loved the Japanese Emotional Atmosphere

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

This is a particularly strong recommendation.

It explores love, loss, mortality and the value of ordinary things through a magical premise.

The publisher explicitly recommends it for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

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📚 If You Loved the Cozy Japanese Setting

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

Forget time travel.

Keep the books, Tokyo atmosphere, human connection and gentle emotional transformation.

Goodreads readers who enjoyed Before the Coffee Gets Cold frequently list Days at the Morisaki Bookshop among their next reads.

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🐱 If You Want More Quiet Japanese Magical Realism

Try:

• The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
• What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
• Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura
• The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
• The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

The broader ecosystem of Japanese translated fiction has plenty of books built around ordinary spaces, unusual premises and emotional transformation.

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🔥 Before the Coffee Gets Cold vs The Midnight Library

If you’re deciding between the two, use this shortcut:

☕ Choose Before the Coffee Gets Cold if you want:

• A shorter read
• Multiple emotional stories
• Japanese setting
• Café atmosphere
• Relationships and family
• A quieter reading experience
• A story about regret and unfinished conversations

📚 Choose The Midnight Library if you want:

• A larger philosophical premise
• Alternate lives
• One central protagonist
• More exploration of personal choices
• A broader examination of how we evaluate our own lives

My pick for an emotionally intimate reading experience:
☕ Before the Coffee Gets Cold

My pick for exploring “what if I had lived differently?”:
📚 The Midnight Library

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📖 Where Before the Coffee Gets Cold Fits Among Japanese Fiction

One reason I recommend this book to readers new to Japanese translated fiction is accessibility.

You don’t need to understand Japanese history.

You don’t need extensive knowledge of Japanese mythology.

You don’t need to decode complicated cultural references.

You simply enter a café.

Someone orders coffee.

Someone sits in a chair.

And suddenly you’re thinking about your own life.

That makes Kawaguchi an approachable entry point into contemporary Japanese fiction.

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✍️ About Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Who Is Toshikazu Kawaguchi?

Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a Japanese novelist, playwright and director born in Osaka in 1971.

His journey to becoming a novelist is particularly interesting because theatre came first.

He worked in theatre and was associated with the theatrical group Sonic Snail, where he produced, wrote and directed stage works. Before the Coffee Gets Cold originated as a stage production before becoming the novel that introduced him to a worldwide readership.

Kawaguchi has spoken about his interest in ordinary people’s lives and relationships, something that becomes very apparent in Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

🎭 Theatre shaped his storytelling

This matters.

Kawaguchi doesn’t construct an enormous fictional universe.

Instead, he places ordinary people inside an unusual situation and allows their conversations to carry the emotional weight.

That is classic theatre thinking.

A room.

A few characters.

A powerful question.

Then let the humans do the work.

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🧩 What Makes Kawaguchi’s Writing Different?

Kawaguchi’s great strength is conceptual simplicity.

He takes an enormous philosophical question:

What would you do if you could revisit the past?

Then shrinks it down to:

Sit here. Drink this coffee. You have until it gets cold.

That compression is clever.

The rules prevent the story from becoming a conventional time-travel adventure.

Instead of asking:

“How can I change history?”

the characters have to ask:

“What do I really need to say?”

That is a much more human question.

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🏆 My EBW Reader Decision Score

☕ Concept: 9/10

Simple, memorable and immediately intriguing.

❤️ Emotional depth: 8.5/10

The emotional stories are the heart of the book.

🧠 Thought-provoking: 9/10

It will probably make you think about your own unfinished conversations.

✍️ Writing style: 7.5/10

The translated prose is straightforward rather than highly literary.

🎭 Character development: 7.5/10

The episodic structure means some characters are necessarily explored more briefly.

🌏 Global appeal: 9/10

The emotional themes cross cultural boundaries beautifully.

📱 Shareability: 9/10

The premise generates questions people naturally want to discuss.

☕ Cozy factor: 9/10

One café + coffee + conversations + melancholy = dangerously effective reading atmosphere.

⭐ Overall: 8.5/10

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🚦Who Should Read Before the Coffee Gets Cold?

🟢 READ IT IF…

You want a book that makes you pause.

You enjoy stories about human relationships.

You like magical realism without complicated world-building.

You enjoy Japanese literature in translation.

You are interested in regret, memory and second chances.

You want a relatively short book with an emotionally substantial idea.

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🟡 READ IT WITH THE RIGHT EXPECTATIONS IF…

You normally read thrillers.

You prefer highly developed characters.

You want complicated time-travel rules.

You expect the supernatural premise to drive the entire plot.

The book’s pace is deliberately gentle.

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🔴 SKIP IT FOR NOW IF…

You need action.

You want an elaborate science-fiction story.

You dislike sentimental fiction.

You don’t enjoy episodic storytelling.

You want a novel where travelling into the past actually changes history.

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💭 My Take After Finishing the Book

Three weeks after finishing Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I don’t remember every detail of every conversation.

But I remember the question.

And perhaps that is the real success of the book.

A great book doesn’t always stay in your head as a complete story.

Sometimes it leaves behind a small question that quietly follows you around.

For me, this book left one:

If I were given one more conversation with someone from my past, would I really need to change anything?

Maybe I would.

Maybe I wouldn’t.

But I know one thing.

I would probably drink the coffee very slowly.

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☕ The Biggest Lesson I Took From the Book

We spend an enormous amount of our lives wishing we could go backwards.

But perhaps the more useful question is:

What can I say today that my future self would otherwise regret leaving unsaid?

That’s where Before the Coffee Gets Cold becomes more than a time-travel story.

It becomes a reminder about the present.

The coffee is already getting cold.

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📚 Should You Read the Rest of the Series?

Absolutely, if the first book worked for you.

The series has now expanded to six books:

1. ☕ Before the Coffee Gets Cold
2. ☕ Tales from the Cafe
3. ☕ Before Your Memory Fades
4. ☕ Before We Say Goodbye
5. ☕ Before We Forget Kindness
6. ☕ Before I Knew I Loved You

Pan Macmillan currently identifies Before I Knew I Loved You as the sixth book in the series.

The later books continue exploring new visitors, relationships and emotional questions within the wider world of Kawaguchi’s cafés.

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🌍 Why This Book Works for a Global Audience

You don’t need to have lived in Japan to understand this book.

You don’t need to have experienced the exact circumstances of its characters.

Because underneath the Tokyo café is something much bigger:

human beings trying to live with the things they cannot change.

That is universal.

A reader in India may connect with the family relationships.

A reader in Japan may connect with the café setting.

A reader in Canada may recognize the loneliness of separation.

A reader in Brazil may think about someone they lost.

A reader in Britain may remember an unfinished conversation.

Different countries.

Different lives.

Same human ache.

That is the magic of translated literature at its best.

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🏁 Final Verdict: Is Before the Coffee Gets Cold Worth Reading?

YES. ☕❤️

But don’t pick it up expecting a traditional time-travel adventure.

Pick it up expecting four emotional journeys inside a tiny Tokyo café.

Expect regret.

Expect tenderness.

Expect conversations that arrive too late.

And expect the book to quietly ask you what you would do if you were given one impossible opportunity.

My Reader Decision: 8.5/10

Best for:
❤️ Emotional readers | ☕ Cozy fiction lovers | ⏳ Time-travel fans | 🌏 Japanese literature readers | 🧠 Reflective readers | 📚 Fans of The Midnight Library

Not for:
🚀 Hard science fiction readers | 🔥 Action lovers | 🧩 Readers seeking complex time-travel mechanics

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📌 Final Reader Question

If you could sit in the mysterious chair at Funiculi Funicula Café and travel back in time for one cup of coffee, who would you meet?

And more importantly…

What would you say before the coffee gets cold? ☕

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