New Silent Cafe in Osaka Employs Mostly Deaf Staff

A new cafe in Osaka that employs mostly deaf and hard-of-hearing staff builds on Japan’s growing tradition of cafes that revel in silence.

By Alyssa Pearl Fusek

Cafes prohibiting speaking, aka silent cafes, have been on the rise in recent years. But the newly opened Shojo (清浄) cafe in Osaka’s hip Nakazaki district is using silence to promote an…