Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a magical-realist novel about a Tokyo cafe that offers customers the opportunity to travel through time. The book is divided into four parts.
The first section focuses on a woman who wants to go back in time to redo her last conversation with her boyfriend before he left for America. The woman learns there are strict rules to the cafe's time travel: You can only visit people who have also been in the cafe, you must stay in your seat, and you must finish your cup of coffee before it goes cold; if you stay too long, you will be transformed into a ghost. The woman also learns that nothing she does in the past will change her present...
