Days at the Torunka Café: I’ve seen better days

In the city of Tokyo there sits the Torunka Café where both people and cats come and return. Some of the main characters are Shizuki the café owner’s teenage daughter who’s still dealing with the death of her elder sister 6 years before and falls in love with her dead sister’s ex-boyfriend. You also have a middle-aged man Hiroyuki Yumata, grieving the chance that he gave up pursuing a woman he loved and is looking for some semblance of happiness but not quite finding it. You also have Chinatsu Yukimura an eccentric young woman who folds a napkin in the shape of a ballerina and even tells the barista Shuichi Okimura that they were lovers in a past life. Other than a hot cup of coffee each character has something to learn.

 Some nice ideas but I’ve seen better days

Let’s start off with the good. I like that the characters had to learn something and there were two quotes that I did like One seldom finds pure happiness without a touch of sadness. The other quote, In life, reunions are the closest thing we get to miracles. Of course, I love that the setting is in Japan, Tokyo specifically. Here’s where it’s not so good. For a little book, the story moved at the speed of a sloth. The way the characters behaved was extremely far-fetched, for example, there were times some of these characters were stalking other ones and the ones stalked don’t even react like how normal people would after being stalked. Chinatsu’s reasoning for lying about the “lovers in a past life story” to Shuichi (yes that happened) was because it was easier than telling the truth. One might wonder, Did I read an unedited story? After reading Satoshi Yagisawa’s Morisaki Bookshops, while I realize this story was different, I was still expecting the same magic and unfortunately Days at the Torunka Café did not deliver. I hope for better in the future.