If You Could Go Back, Who Would You Want To Meet
I used to think countries were easy to pin down. India? Subway surfers character (because we are chaotic), and Japan on the other hand would be an emotionless app developer. Well, that’s what I used to believe till I read this Japanese book series “Before the Coffee Gets Cold”
These four books, originally written by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and translated into English by Geoffrey Trousselot, explore the question, “If you could go back in time, to whom would you go?” But it’s not that simple.
A nine-seater, small cafe located in the basement down a narrow street in Tokyo, Japan claims that you can go back to the past (or future). With absolutely no windows or ventilation, Funiculi Funicula is always cool, thanks to its location and has this old sepia hue to it, which makes it hard to keep track of time.
A small bell rings when you enter the cafe. Always welcoming you is the sweet smell of Mocha coffee beans and an unbothered lady wearing a white dress reading a book. On the surface level, you’d think the rumours are baseless. I mean such a sad-looking cafe can take you back? No way – that’s what they all think at first.
The owner of the cafe, Nagare Tokita, is a huge man with a huge heart. Apart from serving good coffee and good food, he is an extremely good listener. Another good listener (yet unbothered) worker at the cafe is Nagare’s cousin, Kazu Tokita. She looks average, but her mind is incredible. She’s the only one who seems to know what happens around the cafe and its people. The Tokitas spend their whole day maintaining the cafe and the customers who go along to find the truths of the cafe.
See, I’ll be honest with you, these books aren’t mysterious, humorous, or thriller. They are just cute. They are just stories of 16 different people wanting to travel through time to talk to somebody they lost, or will lose.
Every customer who walks in has a heartbreaking reason, someone they loved isn’t with them anymore. Be it someone whose husband almost forgot her because of his Alzheimer’s, or be it someone whose dog passed away. The Tokita siblings swear they don’t judge, they just let you know the rules and mind their business. (I don’t really know how that’s possible but they seem genuine)
Talking about the rules, there are five simple rules that you need to follow to be able to go back to the past.
- The only people you can meet in the past are those who have visited the cafe.
- There’s nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present.
- In order to return to the past, you have to sit in that seat and that seat alone. If the seat is occupied, you must wait until it is vacated.
- While back in the past, you must stay in the seat and never move from it, or you’ll be forced back to the present.
- Your journey begins when the coffee is poured and must end before the coffee gets cold.
Unless you don’t want to turn into a ghost, you need to follow these rules with utmost sincerity. Remember the lady in the white dress? Yes, she’s a ghost who couldn’t finish the coffee before it got cold. These rules may seem absurd, but they only make sense. You see, nobody has or should have the power to change the past because it’s human nature to try to protect your loved ones even if it means breaking the laws of nature. And if you don’t have a time limit, why would you even come back right? Only if you are able to follow them, you are permitted to go back, provided the chair is empty. And you thought going back was easy?
The chair that takes you through time is occupied by the ghost lady, who vacates the chair only once in 24 hours to go to the toilet. That’s your window, if you miss it, you’ll have to wait another 24 hours in anticipation, not knowing when she gets up.
And if you can’t wait so long, then maybe time travel isn’t for you. Pretty convenient, no?But some people did travel through time and the stories were heart-wrenching, to say the least.
In the first book, “Before the Coffee Gets Cold”, you get to meet four different women. Each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer, in order to confront the lover who left her, to receive a letter from their husband whose memory has begun to fade, or to see her sister one last time, and to meet the daughter she never got the chance to know.
In the second book. “In Tales from the Cafe”, you’ll get to see a man seeking the best friend whose daughter he raised as his own, a son who did not come home for his mother’s funeral, a lover who travelled to see the girl he couldn’t marry and an ageing detective who couldn’t save his own wife.
In the next book, “Before Your Memory Fades”, there are four more visitors, a daughter who resents her deceased parents for leaving her orphaned, a comedian who aches for his beloved and their shared dreams. A sister whose grief has become all-consuming, and a man who realised his love for his childhood friend.
You’ll be introduced to four more characters in the last book of the slot, “Before We Say Goodbye”. There’s a husband with something important left to say, a woman who couldn’t bid her dog farewell, a woman who couldn’t answer a proposal and a daughter who drove her father away.
All these stories talk about human emotions in a soft and understanding way. Everyone’s reason is justified, their grief, their anger, their regret, you end up feeling everything. Although these stories are well written, at a point, it does get a little monotonous as the basic storyline is the same, someone walks in, asks about the rumours, travels through time, and pours their hearts out and comes as a new, happier person.
But as I mentioned earlier, the purpose of the books isn’t thriller or humorous, it’s teaching us how to be kind and respectful to others, as everybody is in some sort of fight with themselves. Just like the Tokita siblings, we are mere spectators in their lives. Listening (or rather reading) their stories and hoping that they drink all their coffee before it gets cold.
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