I finally finished a book.
After months of being in a reading slump, I finally reached the last page of Matcha on Monday by Michiko Aoyama. And of course, finishing the book wasn’t enough. I had to sit with it for a while and think, okay, what exactly did this book make me realize?
I’ve always liked Michiko Aoyama’s books for that reason. I first read What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, which gave me so many little realizations about life, and earlier this year, I read Hot Chocolate on Thursday and even wrote about it here on the blog. So when I picked up Matcha on Monday, I already had an idea what kind of reading experience I was getting into, although I didn’t expect this one to make me look at my own life quite this way.
A matcha pop-up on a Monday
One of the things I found interesting about this book is that there isn’t really a matcha shop at the center of the story. It was a coffee shop that happens to be closed every Monday, and one Monday, they decide to use the space for a pop-up selling matcha and sweets from famous shops in Kyoto. From there, different people start coming into the story, each carrying their own little piece of life with them.
The book moves from one character’s perspective to another, so it doesn’t really follow the usual structure of having one main character, one central conflict, and everything building toward one big resolution. Instead, you’re slowly introduced to different people and their stories, and eventually you start recognizing the connections between them. There were definitely moments when I thought, wait lang, siya ‘yung nakita ko kanina, ‘di ba? Hahaha. By the end, some of the names had already blurred together in my head—Asami, Teruya, wait, sino nga ulit?—but I remembered how their stories connected and I think that’s what mattered more.
But of course, I already had an idea that the characters were connected somehow. The fun part for me was figuring out how they were connected. Someone would cameo in one story and then a few chapters later, you realize that person has their own story and suddenly you understand why that little encounter mattered. It made the book feel like a collection of lives that happened to overlap rather than one big story that everyone was simply moving through.
If you’ve read Hot Chocolate on Thursday
The book becomes even more fun if you’ve read Hot Chocolate on Thursday. You can absolutely read this book on its own and understand the stories, but there are characters from the previous book who are mentioned here and recognizing them gives you this little eureka! moment that you wouldn’t get otherwise. It’s like being in on a secret. You’d be reading along and suddenly think, WAIT. Siya ‘yung babae na nagho-hot chocolate na may ka-penpal from the previous book! 😂 The two books aren’t sequels in the traditional sense, but they feel like they’re part of the same little universe and I personally think reading Hot Chocolate on Thursday first makes Matcha on Monday more rewarding.
Again, all of us are connected
But the thing that stayed with me most wasn’t really the romance or even the individual stories. It was the idea of how connected people are, even when we don’t realize it.
There’s a part in the book that says:
If you trace things back, the number of linked hands multiplies exponentially. If even one of those hands had let go, we wouldn’t have made it here. Every encounter is the result of a long line of connections between people whose faces we’ll never know.
That line really made me stop and think about my own life, particularly the opportunities I’ve had that sometimes felt like they simply appeared out of nowhere.
Because really, opportunities don’t just fall from the sky and land directly in front of us. We work hard for the things we want, of course, but there are always other people somewhere in the story. Someone had to recommend you. Someone had to trust you. Someone had to create an opportunity because they needed something, and somewhere along that chain, your path happened to meet theirs.
I thought about my current job when I read this.
Years ago, I had a friend who had already worked in Singapore, and she recommended me for a writing opportunity. At the time, it was simply a recommendation. She knew I could write and there was a need for a writer, and she probably thought, uy, pwede siya. I don’t think either of us knew that it would eventually lead me to where I am now.
My position eventually evolved. The work changed. And somewhere along the way, I ended up working with my current boss. And if I trace that story backwards, I can keep going. My friend had her own dream of working in a bigger world, that dream led her somewhere, that somewhere eventually gave her connections, those connections led to an opportunity, and that opportunity eventually found its way to me.
But of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Because I still had to do the work. I had to prove that I could do the job, learn new things, take on opportunities when they came, and keep going when things changed. But I also can’t pretend that I got here entirely on my own. Someone opened a door for me because they thought I was capable of walking through it.
And before that person could open that door, someone probably opened one for them.
Maybe this is what “the universe conspires” means
It also made me think of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and the idea that when you really want something, the universe conspires to help you achieve it. I’ve always liked that thought, but Matcha on Monday made me see it in a slightly different way. Maybe the universe doesn’t always conspire in some grand, mystical way. Maybe sometimes, the universe conspires through people.
Maybe it’s the friend who recommends you for a job. Perhaps it’s the person who happens to need exactly what you know how to do. Maybe it’s someone who teaches you something that only makes sense years later. Sometimes it could even be a person you barely remember, whose small decision eventually became one of the reasons you ended up where you are now.
And the funny thing is, we might be doing the same thing for other people without knowing it. We might be one of those invisible hands in somebody else’s story. A recommendation we casually give, a person we introduce, an opportunity we pass along: something that feels ordinary to us could eventually become important to someone else.
That thought made me feel grateful.
I’ve been working hard toward the things I want in my life, but Matcha on Monday reminded me that other people have been working too. My friend was working toward her own dreams. My boss had his own career and his own path. The people who gave me opportunities had their own reasons for making the choices they made, and none of us were necessarily thinking about how those separate paths would eventually intersect.
We were just living our lives, doing what we needed to do, and somehow we met each other along the way.
Maybe that’s what makes ordinary encounters so meaningful. We rarely know which small decision will become part of someone else’s bigger story, just as we’ll probably never know all the people whose small decisions became part of ours.
So after months of not finishing a book, I’m actually glad that Matcha on Monday was the one that finally got me to the last page. I started reading it because I wanted another Michiko Aoyama story, and I ended it thinking about all the people, known and unknown, who somehow became part of the story of how I got here.
I worked for the life I have now, but I didn’t get here alone.
And maybe somewhere along the way, without knowing it, we were all working our way toward meeting each other.
