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(3.49/5)A nice journey
I really enjoyed the book. The idea of it : a coffeeshop where you can go back in the past, while drinking a coffee. It is well written, It's like I was there with the characters. I could smell the coffee that Kazu was pourring, sharing the bell and waiting to see who was coming from the stairs. I could see the 3 old clocks and Mr Fusagi with his magazines.
I didn't really like the 1st story: the MC was too noisy and impolite.... But I loved the 3 other ones. It is very sad though. And anot
Very Japanese...
The stories are short and nice, but very Japanese. I found myself getting irritated by the MCs. They don't speak their minds, they are self-sacrificing to a fault, ... My feminist heart was bleeding. 🥺 Mabye it's the author's way of holding a mirror in front of people and urging them to not be like this, but it can be a tad bit aggrevating while reading. 😅
I did not cry but that last story was tugging at my heartstrings for sure. Though getting pregnant on purpose, when you know it
Coffee and time travel make a good combination
A cafe where you can travel back in time, but with several rather troublesome rules, and for only a limited time (until the coffee gets cold).
If you are looking for your first full novel to read in Japanese this is a good option. The grammar is relatively straightforward if you are at N4/N3 level. There is also a well populated vocab sheet in the Wanikani Book Club. There’s an English translation too.
The book is broken into four long chapters. Each tells the story of one person’s journey bac
As a note, I listened to the audiobook version, I do not own the text.
This felt to me as being very similar in both level and pacing as 世界から猫が消えたなら. Human drama with a bit of a magic to make the plot unique, a lot of happy/sad moments, and small digestible stories within the overarching one. Nothing really niche in terms of vocab.
As a quick summary: There is a chair in a cafe which you can sit in and travel back in time, but you can only meet people who have been to the cafe before, cannot c
Poignant and Easy to Read
I really enjoyed this book! While I didn't love the first story, the following three were really poignant and well-written. I appreciated that they followed the characters introduced in the first story, which gave the short stories a nice feeling of connectivity.
The writing could be a bit repetitive at times, but I cried while reading (once in public!) and it definitely packed an emotional punch. My favorites were the second and fourth stories. I really liked Koutake and Fusagi as well as Kei,
One of the easiest books in Japanese I've ever read
Well, the book isn't that great, and it's true that the characters are pretty one-dimensional and that it has a lot of plot holes when it comes to the time travel mechanics.
But if you're able to ignore those problems, it can be a pretty entertaining book for beginners, maybe the first novel you try in Japanese (I actually think it's better to start with this than with children's books). I had a good time with it, but I also treated it as something easy to read and didn't think too deeply about