Recently, I’ve been taking part in not only some book clubs, but also buddy reads! Recently Emma from Words and Peace reached out to me about buddy reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. This book has been on my radar for a while, so I was very happy she asked if we could read it together! Before getting started on the book we wanted to share some pre-discussion questions about the book, as well as our answers. Let us know if you’ve read this book too, or are planning to! But first, let’s welcome Emma!

Hi Julie Anna, so thrilled you are joining me at Julie Anna’s Books to read Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I’m Emma, I have been book blogging at Words And Peace for over ten years. For several years, I have been participating in the Japanese Literature Challenge organized by Meredith at Dolce Bellezza. This year, I was planning on reading only nine Japanese classics, and then I won this book at her giveaway! So that’s why I am here with you today.

The Questions

1. If you could visit this cafe and have the opportunity to time travel, what would you do?

Emma: First, I think I would be attracted by the location of the coffee shop: “in a small back alley’, and it’s been there for “more than one hundred years”. So it must be a really cool place.
Now for its special feature, “the chance to travel back in time”, I don’t think I would enjoy it for personal events in my life. What I would be really intrigued to see, is what did the US landscape look like in the 1850s. You may wonder, why this idea? Simple, I love birding, and I have read descriptions by John James Audubon (1785-1851) when there were so many birds everywhere. I would really love to see that, with also so many species that have disappeared since.

Julie Anna: I’m really intrigued by the location of the coffee shop as well. It sounds like a nice, little-known place with an air of mystery to it that I’m looking to discover. If I got to visit myself, I would love the opportunity to visit loved ones that are no longer here. And given the short timeframe, it would be just enough time to just talk with them again. I would also love to visit much older periods in history and see what the landscape was like – but for the most part, I might actually want to stay relatively close to the present!

2. Would you want to change anything?

Emma: I just said I wouldn’t want to use the special features of this café for personal events. Because no, really I don’t think I would change anything. I am who I am today thanks to all my past experience, my successes and failures. I think there’s a blessing (sometimes very much hidden) in everything I had to go through, even if it was a real ordeal at the time. And some of these things lead to great things in my life. When you are deep into something, you never have the whole picture. Now that I am older, I see how these tough times lead to better things.

Julie Anna: I’d want to leave things the way they are, in fear of accidentally changing things for the worse. The butterfly effect makes me a bit nervous! And even if there were things I wanted to do differently in retrospect, I wouldn’t want to change them. I’ve learned from both good and bad experiences, and have been learning how to embrace life’s failures, big or small. And while I sometimes struggle with perfection, I wouldn’t want to aim to change anything regardless.

3. What are your expectations going into the book?

Emma: I am always eager to discover a new Japanese author, and this has recently been translated into English. So this will be a nice change, as I have recently read a lot of Japanese classics.

Julie Anna: I only know the basic premise of this book so far, so I imagine it will be very character-centric and less about the cafe itself. Although if we learned more about the cafe and get a good feel for its setting I think that would be really nice! I’m also looking forward to reading more translated fiction this year, and am always excited to discover authors that are new to me.

4. What have you heard about this book so far?

Emma: Lots of very enthusiastic feedback. But as I knew I was going to read it, I didn’t read the reviews in many details, to keep all the surprises alive for my own reading.

Julie Anna: In terms of the story itself, I know only the basic premise so far and a little about a couple of the characters. I’ve also heard great things about this book, but not with much detail about the book itself. I’m happy to be keeping it that way going in, as this sounds like a good book to not know too much about going in.

5. Do you often read books with fantastical / magical elements?

Emma: Not usually, though I have read  almost all of Haruki Murakami’s novels, so I have exposed to a lot of that through his writing!

Julie Anna: I do! I read more on the side of high fantasy, but I’d really like to try more books similar to this one that features fabulism or magical realism.

6. How do you think the magical elements of this book will be executed?

Emma: I really have no idea, and I am glad. I am looking forward to having the author surprise me. Otherwise, where would be the fun?

Julie Anna: I have a feeling that we won’t get any insight as to how the cafe works, but I’m honestly okay with that! I think this book will be more about the characters themselves, but then again, so many things could happen!

7. From the synopsis:

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.

Whose character’s story are you most interested in learning about?

Emma: Possibly the daughter. But really, it will be most intriguing to see how the author ties all that together.

Julie Anna: I’m looking forward to all of their stories, but I’m the most interested in the spouse who is trying to receive a letter from their husband with Alzheimer’s. But for all of the characters, I’m looking forward to seeing how the author introduces their stories and shows the impacts of time travel and their experiences on them.

Have you read Before the Coffee Gets Cold, or is it on your TBR? Let us know what you thought (but no spoilers, please!). We’re both looking forward to reading this one together and sharing our thoughts. Additionally, if you ever visited a cafe like this, where would you like to go?