‘I was so absorbed in the things that I couldn’t change, I forgot the most important thing.’

Toshikazu Kawaguchi feeds my need for dissecting human characters.

The story takes place in a basement café set in a back alley, in Tokyo. It is a quaint family run café, that is famous for its time travel. The book follows a Love Actually style narrative, where there are multiple characters having a focused storyline,  that all come together at the end. Each chapter follows a different person’s experience with time travel; Kawaguchi refers to them as The Lovers, Husband and Wife, The Sisters and Mother and Child. It follows the different relationships between the characters, and their dealings with the notion that they can’t change the past.

If you could go back in time, who would you speak to, and what would you say?

However, there are a myriad of conditions to do so.

The conditions are.

• You must sit in a specific chair
• You cannot change the past
• You cannot leave the chair
• You must do what you want to do before the coffee gets cold

It is a deeply provoking question, that before reading the book I had never put much thought into. Now that I have had time to sit on the story, I am still not sure who I would speak to or what I would say. Maybe I will read it again in a few years, after I have lived a bit more life and met new people. Would I still be unsure? Or maybe, there will be someone I wish I could go back and speak to.

When growing up, I remember being told that you can’t change the past. I’ve always found this a strange thing for one person to say to another, because is it not a given that you can’t change the past? All human beings have had an experience where they learn from their mistakes. I myself, often feel embarrassed when I slip up or do something wrong, but this story puts into perspective how short our lives are. At the end of the day, these mistakes are insignificant and won’t be what we are remembered for.

If you have not already been able to infer, Kawaguchi makes you overthink the choices you have made in your life. What would happen if you just responded? What would happen if that person never left? What would happen if your loved one never got ill?

There is a prominent theme of resilience in this story. The characters must accept the past, to move on with their futures. It is set in the present, with a great emphasis on actions and consequence. Sometimes even the smallest of action can have the biggest consequence.

Although, it is quite a short book, by the end, Kawaguchi makes you feel as if you know the characters personally.  Before reading this book, I often placed focus on revisiting my past actions – which I cannot change. However, I am now trying to be more mindful of focusing on my future actions because those are the things that I can change, and one day my future will be my past.