TOKYO: A project to help young people who stutter, has started in Japan by giving them work experience to build their confidence.
The project, named "Cafes Where Orders Take Time," takes over existing cafes for a day at a time and hopes to promote a wider understanding of the speech impediment condition while helping people who stutter achieve their life goals.
Kyodo News reports that at a cafe in the city of Toyama in central Japan, four young waiters worked while wearing face masks bearing printed messages such as "I want to talk with many people" and "Please let me finish speaking."
Customers were asked not to hurry or interrupt their servers if they stuttered while taking orders and were even urged to give what they believed to be friendly encouraging words such as "relax" or "slow down."
With the cafe's welcoming atmosphere, many customers were happy to listen to the staff talk about facing their anxieties and difficulties with stuttering.
One of the waiters is Hitonari Nakazawa, an 18-year-old high school student from Tsunan, Niigata Prefecture, who said he had avoided speaking to other people as much as possible.
"But today I was able to really enjoy my conversations."
Another staff member, Marin Kanamori, 21, a third year student at the University of Toyama, said it was an opportunity to encourage herself to speak.
"I would like to become a speech therapist in the future," she added.
Stuttering, a condition where the first sound is involuntarily repeated or prolonged, is estimated to affect some 1.2 million people in Japan.
Many develop the condition in early childhood and usually see improvements or a resolution over time. However, it can lead to bullying or social anxiety because of a lack of acceptance by others.
One of the customers who visited the cafe, Mitsuko Kondo, 52, said he learned it was important to get to know each person and try to understand them.
The idea of taking over an existing cafe for one day to help stutterers is the brainchild of Arisa Okumura, 30, from Tokyo, who worked as one of the four waiters.
As a child, Okumura said she was teased by other kids who would tell her they feared they would catch my stutter if they touched me. She then found herself avoiding conversations with others so that her condition could go unnoticed.
However, she dreamed of working in a cafe and traveled to Melbourne, Australia, a city known for its cafe culture.
She said that working at one of the local cafes there allowed her to enjoy working with others, that included disabled or homeless people and those who could not speak English.
Armed with the experience, she wanted to replicate the experience in Japan and ultimately launched the programme, after returning in 2017.
The cafe programme has been carried out twice in Tokyo, and Toyama is the first to hold it outside the capital.
Okumura said she was planning to host future cafe events in Mie and Nagano prefectures as chances for people with the condition to get together and share their problems were rare outside big cities.
More events are scheduled to take place in Tokyo and Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, this summer.
"I will strive to create a society in which young people struggling with stuttering can challenge the things they really want to do and never quit," Okumura said.