Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

A few months ago, when I was reading a wide selection of novels dealing with Time Travel, I was unaware of Toshikazu Kawaguchi and his two time travel books - Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales From The Cafe (Before The Coffee Gets Cold Book 2) . Had I been familiar with these two back then, the two would have certainly made my list......perhaps even my my top ten.

The summary from the wikipedia page for the first novel does a very good job describing that novel -

In a narrow back alley in Tokyo lies a café called Funiculi Funicula. In the café, customers have the opportunity to travel back to a time of their choosing, as long as they follow a long list of rules. There is only one seat in the café that allows time travel; the seat is only available when the ghost that usually occupies it goes for a toilet break; once back in time, customers can't leave the seat; the only people in the past who can be met are people who have visited the café; whatever happens in the past, the present won't change; and, most importantly, the customer has to return to the present before their cup of coffee goes cold.
The novel follows the stories of the café staff, notably barista Kazu, and four different customers. The first, a businesswoman named Fumiko, tries to repair her relationship with her boyfriend after he left the country for a job in the United States. The second, a nurse named Kohtake, tries to find a letter her Alzheimer-stricken husband wrote. The third, a bar owner named Hirai, tries to talk to her sister whom she's been avoiding. The fourth, one of the café co-owners named Kei, tries to go to the future to talk to her unborn daughter.

Upon reading the first in the series, I immediately began reading the second book. A third book in the series, Before Your Memory Fades , is due for release in November, 2022.

In 2018, the novel was adapted to film as Kōhī ga samenai uchi ni (title translated to Cafe Funiculi Funicula ). I found the film on a Russian website - ok.ru - fortunately, with English subtitles. Watching it is definitely on my to do list.