A Cup of Time Travel: Your Guide to the Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series

In Before I knew I loved you, Toshikazu Kawaguchi takes us back to the warm heart of the mysterious Funiculi Funicula Cafe, with another four guests whose luminous stories of love, lost and won again, will reaffirm your belief in its eternal potential. In this book, we meet:

- The girl who wishes to make amends with the mother she never accepted
- The man who waited for a reply from his girlfriend, and never heard from her
- The woman anxious to travel ahead to know what her future holds
- The student who travels back to meet his father again, who passed away many years before.

What would you do if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

In a cosy back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe 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.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat. They cannot leave the cafe. And finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

We are back at the Cafe Funiculi Funicula. Amongst the familiar faces, four new customers pay a visit. Each hopes to face up to their past, in order to move on with their lives:

- The man who goes back to see his best friend who died 22 years ago
- The son who missed his own mother’s funeral
- The man who travels to see the girl who he could not marry
- The old detective, with a gift for his late wife . . .

Same old rules apply, with new faces and new stories.

Here's a new cafe, but an old pattern. On the hillside of Mount Hakodate in northern Japan, Cafe Donna Donna is fabled for its dazzling views of Hakodate port. But that’s not all. Cafe Donna Donna offers its customers the extraordinary experience of travelling through time. Among some familiar faces, readers will also be introduced to:

-The daughter who begrudges her deceased parents for leaving her orphaned
-The comedian who aches for his beloved and their shared dreams
-The younger sister whose grief has become all-consuming
-The young man who realizes his love for his childhood friend too late . . .

Before Your Memory Fades is full of heart and emotion.

The regulars at the magical Cafe Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary, secret menu time travel offering. But the journey is not without risks and there are rules to follow. Travellers must have visited the cafe previously and most importantly, must return to the present in the time it takes for their coffee to go cold. This time again the readers are be introduced to a new set of visitors:

- The husband with something important left to say
- The woman who couldn’t bid her dog farewell
- The woman who couldn’t answer a proposal
- The daughter who drove her father away . . .

In the hauntingly beautiful Before We Say Goodbye, Kawaguchi invites us to join his characters as they embark on a journey to revisit one crucial moment in time.

Four new guests enter the mysterious Tokyo café, each with a secret wish, each hoping to go back in time to fulfil it as their coffee is poured . .

- The father who could not allow his daughter to get married
- A woman who couldn't give Valentine's Day chocolates to her loved one
- A boy who wants to show his smile to his divorced parents
- A wife holding a child with no name

And, as ever, they must return before the coffee gets cold. Dive into a tale wrapped with comfort, kindness and emotion.