"Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I honestly can't remember who recommended this book to me, or why I put it in my "to read" queue. But there it sat until it became available. I loved this book!

I've picked a nice spot to discuss it too - Cooke Street Market, featuring poke bowls, coffee and tea.

I'm posting this as a "book club" event for two reasons: 1. I started/finished reading this book in less than a day (when was the last time you just couldn't put a book down?); and 2. though I tend to read non-fiction, I like a good story too.

Description (goodreads 3.67/5 ⭐️):
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold (213 pp, 2015), we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

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 . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

"Before the Coffee Gets Cold" first debuted as a play. There are 4 subsequent novels in the series.

Slow down, read a book.

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Street parking is free on Sundays; you can also park in the Imperial Plaza guest parking lot (entry via Kawaiahao St.).

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3, 13, 40, 51, 52: Kapiolani Blvd. & Cooke St. (<1 block);
6, 7: Queen St. & Cooke St. (1 block).

(more info):
Toshikazu Kawaguchi (goodreads)
Cooke Street Market | menu | yelp: 4.5 ⭐️ / $$