Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Returning to the Present

Note: This post contains spoilers for Before the Coffee Gets Cold!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a 2015 novel by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Originally written in Japanese, the novel mainly tells the story of four different people. Each of them travels through time for different reasons thanks to the unique time-traveling service provided by café Funiculi Funicula. Kawaguchi has since produced sequels with the same time-travel premise.

A Brief Blurb

Being able to time-travel is certainly a dream come true, but the café’s time-travelling service comes with a bunch of seemingly arbitrary rules. To begin with, time-travelling is only possible when you sit down on a certain chair in the café. (And much to everyone’s chagrin, said chair is vacant only when the ghost that occupies it goes to use the toilet.) Then, once you arrive in the time period you desire, you must stay seated. You are also not able to meet people who have not visited café Funiculi Funicula before. And lastly, you must return to the present by drinking the coffee served to you before it gets cold.

Drinking the Coffee and Facing the Present

Whatever in-story lore accounts for the “before-the-coffee-gets-cold” rule mentioned lastly above, a great message is contained there for us readers: We must face the present.

Time travelling isn’t possible in real life, but we can do a “form” of it (or at least, we can do something similar to it). It’s possible to think of old and coming times. I mean this in both the positive and negative sense. We can reminisce about wonderful memories, but we can also wallow in unresolved regrets. We can daydream about the future, but we can also obsessively worry about what lies ahead.

It’s not inherently wrong to think of the past or future. In fact, we can benefit from doing so. How are we to become better human beings if we lack the ability to reflect on past mistakes? And how are we to prepare for the future if we never think about it? Before the Coffee Gets Cold makes this point by having its four characters return to the present as changed people. Their experiences give them “new hearts” to face the present.

However, the novel warns us against never returning to the present. No matter the reason for time-travelling, we must not stay in the past or future forever. It is when we do so that the “time-travelling” experience becomes detrimental. We get too absorbed in the past or future that we lose sight of the present.

So, remember to drink your coffee before it gets cold!