Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“The present doesn’t change. Nothing about Fusagi changed, but Kohtake came to enjoy her conversations with him. Hirai had lost her sister, but the photo she sent to the café showed her looking happy with her parents. The present hadn’t changed- but those two people had.”

Nagare Kazu Kei Hirai Kohtake Fumiko Fusagi

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💭 Thoughts

“Before the Coffee Gets Cold” is a wonderful, unsuspecting book, that has, by the way- also been adapted to a TV show. But we aren't talking about the show right now.

This book explores the meaning of life, and enjoying the present. The entire story takes place in Cafe Funiculi Funicula, a extraordinary cafe in which one can travel through time. This book talks about 4 main stories: A girlfriend- and her boyfriend who abruptly leaves her, A married couple- of which one cannot seem to recall the other, Two sisters- once as thick as thieves but now broken, and A mother and daughter, reunited, at last. Each seemingly simple story touches the hearts of readers with its relatable, realistic situations. How is each character going to make their decisions? What happens to these splintered relationships?

To sum up this book in a single word, it was beautiful.

I don’t mean it lightly! The word beautiful has countless meanings, which differs for everyone. To me, beautiful means something that makes me feel so warm and tingly inside, a feeling that isn’t just happiness and awe, but also with a tinge of sadness, leaving room too, for curiousity.

I admit, when I first started reading this book, I was a little bored. (Though maybe it was because relationships in the first half of the book was about romance and I hadn’t been able to experience it enough for me to savour it properly.) I feel like I gained a deeper understanding for what both sides of the party were going through, and them changing for the better, as a person, once they got to understand each other and grow together.

Honestly, books FEEL different when you have a rapport with it. It becomes an outlet for your emotions to flow freely, and without judgement. Though I wasn’t in any position to relate to any of the characters, I felt strongly and passionately about what they were going through. (As you may infer, I’m an empath) A picture can tell a thousand words, but the words I read in this book was tantalising. Each letter danced on the page, eloquently, like nothing was going to disrupt their gentle waltz.

Actually, I think I just have a thing for words.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold was the number 1 result that popped up whenever I searched for “Japanese books” on google. I can see why this book had become so popular with the world- it feels like a warm sunny ray, shining through a canopy of trees onto a soft bed. If that isn’t already cozy enough!

While misunderstandings are all part and parcel of relationships, I think that a lot of people in the world may gain a new insight to people and relationships, an indispensable, incredibly important part of the human life (lets all appreciate how I used 3 words starting with ‘i’ there), and hopefully, become more understanding to the people around them. The emotions that they might be feeling, the factors that may have caused their course of actions. (That being said, sometimes it cannot be excusable when one hurts the other.)

I strongly believe that the world can become a much peaceful, better place if we were less selfish and more tolerant towards each others’ needs. To accept, respect, and to forgive others. Though we can’t travel in time, and our emotions do get a little hard to handle sometimes, I truly think that it is crucial for us to step into each others’ shoes. If that happens, we might get to perceive things in a slightly different way.

Time is something we all regularly talk about. When asked “Have you ever wanted to go back to the past?” My answer would be: “Well, no.” Yes, It is a given that us as living, breathing creatures, would have experienced regret and fear (it IS in our human nature), but must we need to travel back in time to rewind these moments? Personally, I don’t think so! Rather, I’m glad time travelling doesn’t exist. More often that not, we end up harbouring more negativity by trying to “re do” things. However, every single emotion plays a part in our growth. “Mistakes are good, make more” is a quote I once heard. So true! Learning and making mistakes come hand in hand and we can’t learn if we don’t make mistakes. Afterall, ‘mistakes’ are just ways to success that don’t work. Sometimes, its good to give ourselves some compassion and let it be as it is.

The most important time of our lives, is, the present.

In the last chapter, one of the baristas, Kei, travelled 10 years into the future. Quite like the unpredictable, turbulent nature of ‘future’, things didn’t play out as she had expected it to. The notion of future me is pretty daunting, so wouldn’t it be worser fuelled if I were to travel to the future and see the life that I am leading? How am I like? Have my looks changed? Is it better than what I hope my future is? No matter how inticing the temptation is, would it bring good for us as a society? I’ve never been a believer of fate or destiny, but seeing our futures might make some complacent, and others depressed.