Date: June 26, 2025
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Title: Before The Coffee Gets Cold
Good news: in Tokyo, time travel is possible. Bad news: there are a lot of restrictions and hurdles to jump to do it. First, there’s this matter of a ghost that has taken up residency in the coffee shop’s booth where the time travel takes place. One has to wait for her to get up and use the bathroom (a once daily function that is not on a schedule). While the ghost is preoccupied with handling a function I thought only living beings could experience, the time traveler slips into the seat while the waitress pours a fresh cup of coffee, beginning the experience. Of all the rules the most important is for the traveler to drink all the coffee whilst in the past before it gets cold. If this does not happen the traveler becomes a ghost.
Apparently, this to-be-time-traveler doesn’t like coffee very much and feels this might be a problem for her to choke down a whole cuppa. I say bologna. If the only thing standing between me and becoming a ghost is a cup of coffee? It wouldn’t require a second thought, no matter how bitter the coffee.
The story indicates that this is based on an urban legend. Seeing as how I’m not of the Japanese culture I have no idea if this is a truth or fiction made up by the author and wasn’t getting any solid answers on my Google search. I even went uptown to my local library to pick the brain of the librarian. Together we concluded this is a falsity. The only hits on our search were coming back in relation to this as a play and novel, so I felt justified when I decided to in fact throw in the towel. The writing was ok, but I think a lot of the magic was lost in translation.
Fun fact: according to Google the play was so well received it won the grand prize at the 10th Suginami Drama Festival held in Tokyo and inspired this series of novels.