Diners have no complaints about the service at a pop-up restaurant in central Tokyo, where the 17 waiters and waitresses all suffer from dementia.
“The Restaurant of Order Mistakes” is the brainchild of NHK television director Shiro Oguni, 38.
The goal of his project, scheduled to run Sep. 16-18, 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.
Makoto Ichikawa, a customer, said he enjoyed talking to a waitress who briefly forgot her role and sat down across from 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, Ogino turned to crowd-funding to back the event, which he hopes to hold annually.
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Source: Reuters, 17 September 2017