Japan eatery employs dementia patients

TOKYO: Diners have no complaints about the service at a pop-up restaurant here, where the 17 waiters and waitresses all suffer from dementia.

“The Restaurant of Order Mistakes” — a play on the title of a classic Japanese children’s book, The Restaurant of Many Orders — is the brainchild of NHK television director Shiro Oguni, 38.

The goal of his three-day project, scheduled to end today, is to raise awareness about dementia ahead of World Alzheimer’s Day on Sept 21, and allow the public to interact with those who have the condition in a safe environment, in which the servers need not fear the consequences of any errors they might make.

“It was truly great that everyone believed they would be able to do this job, as long as they had proper support in place,” Oguni said.

Makoto Ichikawa, a customer, said he enjoyed talking to a waitress, who briefly forgot her role, and sat down across him to chat.

Professional cooks prepared the dishes for diners, who were required to register in advance, at a venue in Roppongi’s Ark Hills complex. The organisers included a dementia nursing care home.

Following the success of a similar pop-up restaurant in June, Oguni turned to crowd-funding to back the event, which he hoped to hold annually.

Japan is a global frontrunner in confronting dementia, the cost of which has been estimated at one per cent of the world’s gross domestic product.

Both public and private initiatives have sought to erase the stigma of the disorder that affects nearly five million citizens. One in five Japanese aged 65 or over, or some seven million people, are forecast to have some degree of dementia by 2025. Reuters