“ Adaptations of Time Travel Narratives in Japanese Multimedia: Nurturing Eudaimonia Across Time and Space.” International Research in Children’s Literature, vol.

As scholar Sung-Ae Lee writes, such tales already assume that “time is not one-dimensional but may be two-dimensional, with two strands moving at their own pace and within their own space but with the same characters inhabiting each” (Lee, Sung-Ae. Characters who traverse temporal dimensions have appeared as early as the eighth century in the Japanese folktale of Urashima Tarō, where the protagonist thinks that he has only spent a few days in the undersea palace of a Dragon God when in truth 300 years have passed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.Kawaguchi’s novel belongs to the genre of time travel fiction, which bends the laws of chronological time to enable characters to visit specific points in the past or future. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee-the chance to travel back in time. In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet?

#9 in Bestselling Science Fiction Audiobooks This uplifting tale of human connections is especially worth the listen in our current time of pandemic and feelings of isolation.” Uniting them all are love, sorrow, regret, redemption, and most of all, hope. There are lovers, sisters, mother and daughter, husband and wife, and a ghost.

He smoothly reveals the hearts and lives of each of his characters against the backdrop of the time-travel rules and the mysterious yet legendary cafe. Kawaguchi has imagined a complex and wonderfully creative set of rules for time travel in the cafe, so much so that they become central to the story and character development. The reasons for their journeys are varied, but all are compelled by an unyielding desire to unite with a loved one in a different time. And there are regular customers who come with no intention of traveling through time.īefore the Coffee Gets Cold is a feel-good listen that tells the story of some of those cafe regulars whose minds are eventually changed by their lives’ circumstances. Rules that dissuade most of those who come to the cafe after hearing its legend. “There is a small cafe in Tokyo where you can travel through time.

Before the coffee gets cold genre