Your cart

Your cart is empty

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, 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 by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

SKU: 9781529029581
Regular price $24.99
Unit price
per 
(0)

Discover original voices, explore new ideas, imagine different worlds.

Aotearoa New Zealand-wide shipping.

Recyclable packaging only.

Need help? Contact us.

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, 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?

Reviews from real-life readers (caution: spoilers may lie this way!)

in front of a colourful mural, a set of legs wearing jeans with visible fishnets and bight yellow converse high-tops walks across a yellow bollard.

Discover original voices, explore new ideas, imagine different worlds.

With our curated collection of speculative literature featuring the diverse voices of outsiders, innovators, and creators of all kinds.

Hopeful curiosity

What we can imagine, we can create.

Creative expression

Curating beautiful things and joyful experiences.

Inclusive community

Building a place where all belong.