Dementia Cafes Popular in Japan

It seems anybody is potentially liable to contract in the process of aging; some feel a touch of it in their 50's. Dementia - or otherwise known as senility or cognition impairment. Your memory won't last long enough.

There is a minor social phenomenon is spreading in Japan as the aged and their families flock together in   the so-called Dementia Cafes to browse talking to one another over tea and coffee. They will exchange information on each other's cognition-related experiences. Regular healthy customers are welcome to come and feel how it is to be cognition- impaired.

A middle-aged woman dropped late November in one of those cafes "D Cafe Rehabilitation Workshop" in Meguro, Tokyo:
"My mother breaks into smile each time she comes here. I can momentarily forget about caring for her".

Her mother is well over 80, classified in Level 5,  and relies on her wheelchair most of the time. She suffers from a heavy case of dementia and incommunicable. The woman had learned of the cafe and started to frequent it with her mother.

The workshop part has to do with a certain woodwork part of their activity where patients are involved in simple woodwork exercises to control the progress of symptoms.

Director Hiromichi Takeuchi, 71, of the NPO "D Cafenet", operates 8 such cafes in Meguro, Tokyo, open once a week or a month for 2 hours each time.

"With an admission of 300 yen anybody can come and sit around talking to people sharing common burdens", says Takeuchi.

Besides patients drop by doctors and clinic staff just to converse with people with some degree of dementia.

"Such casual encounters often lead to ad hoc solutions and even to effective treatment.

At the moment, there are some 600 similar cafes across the country operated in the model of the Netherlands and Britain.

News Source: Nikkei Shimbun