If you've ever been to Japan, you will know that in Japanese restaurants, mistakes are not made. On the off chance that a mistake is made, the lengths proprietors will go to make things right with their customers must, in the eyes of a Westerner, be seen to be believed. However, as its name suggests, the Tokyo pop-up Restaurant of Mistaken Orders does things quite differently. "You might think it's crazy. A restaurant that can't even get your order right," reads the English introduction page. "All of our servers are people living with dementia. They may, or may not, get your order right."
Un-Japanese the concept might seem at first, it reflects realities of the country's society in the 21st century: Japan has an aging population with an already high proportion of older adults, and that puts it on track to have the fastest-growing number of prevalent cases of Alzheimer's Disease.
Whole towns have already started structuring their services around a growing number of citizens with dementia. However, dementia itself remains "widely misunderstood," says Restaurant of Mistaken Orders producer Shiro Oguni in the "concept movie" at the top of the post.
You can see more of the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders in 2018's "report movie" , that 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 anybody who's ever worked front-of-the-house in a restaurant will agree is essential, particularly when mistakes happen. We see them deliver orders both correct and incorrect, but the diners seem to enjoy the experience either way: "37 percent of our orders were mistaken," the restaurant reports, "but 99 percent of our customers said they were happy." This reveals another truth about the Japanese food culture that anybody who has eaten in Japan will acknowledge: whatever you order, the chance of its being delicious is approximately 100%.
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