Tales from the Cafe

The second book in the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series, which centres around a Japanese cafe with the unique power to let its visitors time travel, but only within the bounds of the cafe, and before their cup of coffee gets cold. The original title for this book is “before the secret gets out”, and so the stories of the time travellers are themed around loss, whether it's travelling forward in time to confirm your own death, or travelling backwards to meet a deceased friend or lover.

As the title would suggest, in some of the stories they end up accidentally revealing to the person that they are going to die. It's written from the POV of the time traveller, who has their own struggles, but gosh. Letting someone know they are going to die soon is such a horrible thing to place on someone, right? And I'm surprised this plot point is just skipped over in the stories. Nonetheless, there are some bittersweet moments in the stories as the travellers learn how to move on after a loved one's death.

I read this one in Japanese, so for language learners I would say it’s quite good. Since the entire story takes place within the cafe, and the story is mostly dialog, it helps to keep things simple (complex plots are hard enough to keep up with, let alone in another language).