As I’m writing this, Toshikazu Kawaguchi has released five books in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series:
Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2015), Tales from the Café (2017), Before Your Memory Fades (2018), Before We Say Goodbye (2021), and Before We Forget Kindness (2023).
The stories take place in a small Tokyo café called Funiculi Funicula, where—under a set of quite restrictive rules—people can travel through time.
It actually started out as a play back in 2010, before being adapted into a novel in 2015 and later turned into a movie in 2018.
I’ve read the first four books in the series, then watched the movie—and for once, I’m not going to say the usual “the book was better.” Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean the movie was better either. But let’s just say I appreciated how faithful it stayed to the book; only a few adjustments were made to the rules and the characters’ personal stories.
So, I really recommend the movie. It’s cozy, emotional, and has that magical touch that made the book a worldwide bestseller in the first place.
That being said, there’s one more point I’d like to bring up: how different the movie felt compared to how I pictured things while reading the book. And honestly, that kind of thing is really important to me. Sometimes I end up disliking a movie just because an actor doesn’t look the way I imagined the character in my head (I know, it’s weird—but I can’t help it!).
For this movie, it was pretty close in all aspects, except for three points:
- The café itself: When I read the book, I imagined the café to be smaller (maybe just 4 tables), cozy, and less illuminated. I’m not sure if that was mentioned in the book, or if it’s just how I pictured it. Either way, this is definitely not how the café appears in the movie.
- The transition from present to past: In the movie, the transition is shown like diving into a giant pool. I never pictured it this way while reading the book; I imagined it rather as a dive in the coffee’s smoke.
- The ghost: Well, I imagined the ghost to be… more ghostly when I read the book. That wasn’t quite the case in the movie.
That’s it, but overall, I really enjoyed watching the movie. I hope you’ll enjoy it too, whether you’re watching the movie or reading the books!
PS:
Funiculi Funicula is an Italian phrase that translates to “cable car” or “funicular” in English. It refers to a type of transportation system, typically a cable-driven train that climbs steep hills or mountains, often used in places where a regular railway wouldn’t be feasible.
The phrase Funiculi Funicula is also the title of a popular Neapolitan song from 1880, which is associated with the funicular railways in Naples.
