The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders: A Tokyo Restaurant Where All the Servers Are People Living with Dementia

If you’ve ever been to Japan, you’ll know that in Japan­ese restau­rants, mis­takes are not made. And on the off chance that a mis­take is made, even a triv­ial one, the lengths that pro­pri­etors will go to make things right with their cus­tomers must, in the eyes of a West­ern­er, be seen to be believed. But as its name sug­gests, the Tokyo pop-up Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders does things a bit dif­fer­ent­ly. “You might think it’s crazy. A restau­rant that can’t even get your order right,” says its Eng­lish intro­duc­tion page. “All of our servers are peo­ple liv­ing with demen­tia. They may, or may not, get your order right.”

Un-Japan­ese though that con­cept may seem at first, it actu­al­ly reflects real­i­ties of Japan­ese soci­ety in the 21st cen­tu­ry: Japan has an aging pop­u­la­tion with an already high pro­por­tion of elder­ly peo­ple, and that puts it on track to have the fastest grow­ing num­ber of preva­lent cas­es of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease.

Whole towns have already begun to struc­ture their ser­vices around a grow­ing num­ber of cit­i­zens with demen­tia. But demen­tia itself remains “wide­ly mis­un­der­stood,” says Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders pro­duc­er Shi­ro Ogu­ni in the “con­cept movie” at the top of the post. “Peo­ple believe you can’t do any­thing for your­self, and the con­di­tion will often mean iso­la­tion from soci­ety. We want to change soci­ety to become more easy-going so, demen­tia or no demen­tia, we can live togeth­er in har­mo­ny.”

You can see more of the Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders in last year’s “report movie” just above, which shows its team of servers with demen­tia in action. Some shown are in mid­dle age, some are in their tenth decade of life, but all seem to have a knack for build­ing rap­port with their cus­tomers — a skill that any­one who has ever worked front-of-the-house in a restau­rant will agree is essen­tial, espe­cial­ly when mis­takes hap­pen. We see them deliv­er orders both cor­rect and incor­rect, but the din­ers seem to enjoy the expe­ri­ence either way: “37% of our orders were mis­tak­en,” the restau­rant reports, “but 99% of our cus­tomers said they were hap­py.” This con­tains anoth­er truth about Japan­ese food cul­ture that any­one who has eat­en in Japan will acknowl­edge: what­ev­er you order, the chance of its being deli­cious is approx­i­mate­ly 100%.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent;

The French Vil­lage Designed to Pro­mote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to the Pio­neer­ing Exper­i­ment

In Touch­ing Video, Peo­ple with Alzheimer’s Tell Us Which Mem­o­ries They Nev­er Want to For­get

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

In Japan­ese Schools, Lunch Is As Much About Learn­ing As It’s About Eat­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.