Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Genres: Magical Realism, Contemporary Fiction
Originally Published: March 14, 2017
Number of pages: 192
Series: 2nd book of the series
I’m the kind of reader who needs to finish what I start, and after reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I felt like several of the characters got their answers – but the endings still felt incomplete. Tales from the Café picks up in the same spirit: a quick, easy read with simple language and an uncomplicated plot. It’s the kind of book you keep on hand to read in one sitting between heavier, more complex novels. The quality paper and comfortably sized print make it even easier to fly through.
A Café Where Coffee Can Take You Through Time
Just like the first book, the story is set in Café Funiculi Funicula, an old, atmospheric café tucked away in Tokyo. The café has a secret: it lets visitors travel through time – to the past or, more riskily, to the future, since there’s no way to control exactly when you’ll land.
The rules of time travel are strict and unbending:
- You can only meet someone who has also visited the café.
- Only one seat in the café allows you to travel through time.
- That seat is almost always occupied by a silent, ghostly woman in a white dress, who leaves it only once a day, at her own will.
- Nothing you do while traveling can change the present.
A large part of the book’s charm lives in its rituals – the specific coffee cups, the coffee poured from a silver kettle, and the strict rule that you must return before your coffee gets cold. It’s this small, ticking-clock detail that gives the series its name and every visit its quiet urgency.
With the premise set, here’s a full summary of each of the four stories in the book.
Story 1: Gohtaro and Shuichi
Gohtaro Chiba, 51 years old, comes to the café wanting to travel back and see his late best friend, Shuichi. Twenty-two years earlier, Gohtaro had gone bankrupt and ended up homeless after a failed business deal. Shuichi, his old university rugby teammate, found him, took him in, and gave him a job at his restaurant. Not long after, Shuichi and his wife, Yoko, welcomed their newborn daughter, Haruka – and then, tragically, the couple died together in a car accident when Haruka was just a year old.
Out of gratitude and loyalty, Gohtaro raised Haruka as his own, telling her that her mother had died of illness and never revealing that he wasn’t her biological father.
Now, twenty-two years later, Haruka is getting married – and Gohtaro knows the truth about her parents will surface when she registers for marriage. Guilt-ridden, he travels back in time to see Shuichi, planning to record a wedding message and then quietly disappear from Haruka’s life once she learns the truth.
When Gohtaro appears before a younger Shuichi, his old friend is shocked by his aged face and quickly realizes he must be visiting from the future. Sensing something is being hidden, Shuichi presses for the truth and learns that he and Yoko have died, and that Gohtaro has been raising Haruka. Rather than resenting him, Shuichi tells Gohtaro he has earned the right to be Haruka’s father and deserves to be happy. Together, they record a message for her wedding day – one that tells her she has had two fathers all along.
Gohtaro returns to the present resolved to stay in his daughter’s life rather than disappear from it.
Story 2: Yukio and Kinuyo — Saying the Words He Needed to Hear
The second story follows Yukio Mita, an aspiring potter drowning in debt after being conned by a would-be investor. Yukio and his mother, Kinuyo, had grown estranged from his sister Kyoko – a regular at the café – after Kinuyo fell seriously ill. Kyoko chose not to tell Yukio how sick their mother was, not wanting to worry him, and as a result, Yukio missed her funeral entirely.
Overwhelmed by grief, guilt, and financial ruin, Yukio arrives at the café after hours, hoping to travel back and see his mother one last time.
A note for readers: this story touches on suicidal despair, as Yukio initially intends to let his coffee go cold rather than return to the present. If this is a sensitive topic for you, you may want to read this section with that in mind.
With Kazu’s help, Yukio travels to the past to see Kinuyo. Their conversation is quiet and ordinary – the kind of small talk that means everything when time is running out – and Kinuyo makes clear that her only wish is for her son to be happy, not to carry the weight of her death. Moved by the visit, Yukio decides against his original plan: he drinks the coffee and returns to the present with a new sense of hope, going on to make real changes in his life and career.
Story 3: Katsuki Kurata and Asami Mori
This is the story that stayed with me the longest. Katsuki Kurata is diagnosed with leukemia shortly after proposing to his girlfriend, Asami Mori. Rather than burden her with the diagnosis, he keeps it secret and instead makes a plan with a mutual friend, Fumiko (familiar to readers of the first book) – he will travel to the future, to a point after his own death, to check on one thing: whether Asami has found happiness.
His instructions to Fumiko are specific: only bring Asami to the café if she is unhappy or unmarried. If she has moved on and is genuinely happy, Fumiko should say nothing and let her be.
Fumiko ultimately can’t bring herself to keep the secret and tells Asami everything. Asami arrives late, wearing a ring borrowed from the newly married Fumiko, and confronts Kurata, insisting – through evident heartbreak – that she is happily engaged and that he wasted his trip to the future. It’s a lie, and by most accounts, Kurata seems to know it. Rather than calling her out, he lets it stand, satisfied that his life and their love meant enough that she’d choose to protect him with it. He drinks his coffee and returns, believing – or choosing to believe – that she’ll be okay. Afterward, Asami confesses to Fumiko that the lie was her own way of honoring what they had, and resolves to build a genuinely happy life in his memory.
Story 4: Kiyoshi Manda and Kimiko
The book opens with retired detective Kiyoshi Manda visiting the café, asking Kazu for help choosing a birthday gift – a necklace for his wife. He’s familiar with every story from the first two books, having researched them in his years as a detective.
Later, we learn why he’s really there: thirty years earlier, he’d bought his wife, Kimiko, a birthday necklace but never got to give it to her. He’d been held up at work and missed their planned meeting at the café; walking home alone that night, Kimiko was killed after stepping in to stop a mugging.
Kiyoshi travels back to the past to make things right. Because he’s now an old man and Kimiko died three decades earlier, he appears to her not as her husband, but as a stranger passing through. He gives her the necklace and tells her that her husband is sorry he couldn’t make it but that he never forgot her birthday, and never stopped loving her.
She’s overjoyed, having feared he was preparing to leave her; now she believes everything between them is fine. Eventually, she seems to sense the truth that the man before her is her husband, visiting from the future. Because nothing can change the past, she still goes on to die exactly as she originally did. But this time, she does it knowing, without doubt, that she was loved.
The Ending of Tales from the Café
The book ends on a quieter note back in the present. Kazu reveals she is pregnant, and that her power to pour the time-travel coffee has passed to her unborn daughter. In the meantime, Nagare’s daughter, Miki – almost seven years old, and long eager for her turn – steps in to pour the coffee for visitors, carrying the café’s tradition into the next generation.
My Honest Review: 7/10
Tales from the Café feels very much like its predecessor – comforting, easy to read, emotionally resonant, and, frustratingly, full of loose threads.
Story 1 (Gohtaro & Shuichi) left me with real, lingering questions. We never actually see Haruka’s wedding or her reaction to the video – did she ever learn the whole truth about her father, or just receive the message without context? The book doesn’t say, and I suspect the answer is waiting in a later book in the series. I’ll be reading on just to find out.
Story 2 (Yukio & Kinuyo) carries more emotional weight than I initially gave it credit for. It’s not just a son reassuring a dying mother – it’s a story about a man on the edge of giving up entirely, who finds a reason to keep going after one last conversation. Once I understood the fuller context, it became one of the more affecting stories in the book, even if it leans on a heavy topic.
Story 3 (Kurata & Asami) was the one that hit hardest, though I’ll admit I initially read it more harshly than it deserves. My first instinct was to see Asami’s lie as cruel – why not tell a dying man a kind, comforting story instead of coldly insisting she’d moved on? But looking closer, it seems Kurata already suspected the truth and chose to accept her lie anyway, as a quiet gift to each other: it let him believe his life and love meant something, and let her carry his memory forward without guilt. It’s still a gut-punch of a story – just a more bittersweet one than I first gave it credit for.
Story 4 (Kiyoshi & Kimiko) was genuinely touching, with nothing to critique – a clean, moving resolution. He did right by her, and she got to die without the fear of having been abandoned.
And the final scene: Kazu’s pregnancy and Miki stepping in to pour the coffee – clearly sets up threads for the next book, much like the ending of the first one did for this one.
Overall, I’m giving this one a 7/10. It’s not a deep or literary read, and at times it leans a little childish or overly convenient. But it’s genuinely easy to get attached to these characters, and the book is short enough to finish in a day or two. If you’re looking for something light to read between heavier books, Tales from the Café is an easy recommendation.
