‘Paris Syndrome’ leaves Japanese tourists in shock – msnbc.com The Japanese are the worst at doing some cultural research before they go someplace. This is what happens.
Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
“A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses,” Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.
Already this year, Japan’s embassy in Paris has had to repatriate at least four visitors — including two women who believed their hotel room was being bugged and there was a plot against them.
Found by Eric Blumenfeld.
So do all the Japan loving freaks in the world react the same when they get to Japan and find a lack of nubile girls with throbbing monster male genitalia?
Oh, wait, they never leave their parents basements.
What the hell are these people talking about? Paris is a great city! I have toured all over France and have yet to see an unfriendly person. Maybe they were in the suburbs of Paris, which can be a bit unfriendly toward tourists. But the only way to do that is to get on an RER train (or a bus or taxi, but nevertheless, you have to WORK to get to a bad part of Paris.) Stay on the damn METRO, people!
Paris-Shmaris, Japanese-Shmapanese.
Ted Kennedy is dead, so let’s talk about that.
Being an Aussie, the only thing I really know about Ted Kennedy is that in the 80s the Dead Kennedys renamed their single ‘Dead Kennedys – Too Drunk to Fuck’ to ‘Ted Kennedy’s – Too Drunk to Swim’ after the British banned it.
Clearly its a reference to this.
#4 – Hugh Ripper
At least you know something, LOL!
Freedom Fries
Japanese tourist. Forget Paris. That’s why there’s a Disneyland.
2 things.. this is the oldest news ever.
the BBC reported this back in December 2000 and SIX!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6197921.stm
the second thing.. its no bloody wonder..
Paris has to be the most over rated god awful city in the world.
They should be clad in bonnets and black turtle necks to blend in. Parisians are harsh on tourists.
The Japanese look shell shocked everywhere they go. Its “informing” to watch them get off a tourist bus. They stay banned together as if their belts were all connected to one another==except for 2-3 teenager who move 30 feet away to have a smoke.
I think its the relative vacuum of human bodies they abhor.
Apparently there are two sets of French, the ones #2 knows and the ones I knew. I guess JCD doesn’t want diatribes on Kennedy, since he shut off comments. I’ll respect his bandwidth.
#2, you probably “appear” french to them if you’re caucasian. But im sure anyone else who looks black or asian will be treated differently in Paris.
#7 didn’t Euro Disneyland close years ago?
As much as I dislike the French, I detest the Japanese even more (as tourists, folks, not as people). They are not happy unless greeted by obsequious clerks and waiters and locals. They really should stay at home where their super high cost of living pays for such people.
Yeah, I am not overly fond of the Japanese either. For a bunch of xenophobes they sure travel a lot though. German tourists are much cooler.
#11
From all the boondoggle ideas destined to fail from minute one, Disneyland Paris should be the One! Dunno who came up with it, the Americans or the European, but putting a major theme park in a place where it rains most of the time, has one of the highest hotel prices, and the Labor movement is most predominant (ie. they’re on strike most of the time…) is just demented.
Sure, on paper looks peachy: Central European location, close to one of the most visited Cities in the world, good accesses either by air, road or train, developed country with great infrastructures…
I just don’t know why it still survives…
After years hearing about how rude Parisians are, I finally visited Paris a couple years ago.
We had no unpleasant encounters. Seriously… everybody was nice to us.
We where there about a week and on a tight budget, so we took public transportation, shopped in food stores, ate a lot of picnics in parks, etc. We weren’t in some sort of tourist bubble and had lots of encounters with locals who quickly figured out we where Americans.
Seriously, NOTHING. NADA. NO problems.
It makes me wonder about these these tourists who have constant run-ins with the French.
>> Improbus said, on August 26th, 2009 at 4:23 am
>> Yeah, I am not overly fond of the Japanese either. For a bunch of xenophobes they sure travel a lot though
I lived in Japan as a young man and grew very fond of the Japanese. It’s a fantastically interesting rich culture and country.
However, tourists of _all cultures_ tend to be annoying (Germans, too, IMHO and I’ve traveled with those guys.)
But, I agree that tourists from culturally insular countries tend to be the worst — including Americans.
#11 – Euro Disneyland (now known as Disneyland Paris) is very much still alive and kicking. They also opened. They expanded a few years ago opening “Walt Disney Studios Park” nearby.
@Greg
Maybe that is why I have never cared to travel internationally. I’m too insular. That and I don’t have the time and/or money. I don’t even have a passport.
>> pedro said, on August 26th, 2009 at 4:57 am
>> What I don’t get is the kind of trauma they develop.
I don’t totally get-it either, but it’s a well-known phenomenon and not just in Paris. And not just the Japanese.
Living overseas, I TWICE had to help rescue American travelers who psychologically went off the deep-end.
In one case, the person literally stayed rolled-up in ball and wouldn’t leave her room for the two weeks (or so) it took to arrange for her to leave. (I forget what she did for the bathroom!)
In the second case, the person went totally manic and spend all her money racing around the country, making totally bogus business deals.
>> Improbus said, on August 26th, 2009 at 5:39 am
>> @Greg
>> Maybe that is why I have never cared to travel internationally. I’m too insular. That and I don’t have the time and/or money. I don’t even have a passport.
I’m just the opposite — I love seeing different places. Best yet is to stay some place long enough to connect.
Americans don’t HAVE to live in a cultural bubble — it’s’ possible to get some pretty cool cultural exposure right here but most people don’t do it. It’s not easy though — it may be easier to buy an airplane ticket and go to a country than to penetrate that same ethnic community in America.
they do not eat enough prozac as a culture
Having visited both Paris and Tokyo myself, this sounds about right. For a Westerner, Japan is about as foreign a place as you can hope to find. France, well, let’s just say I found everything I’d ever heard…good and bad, completely true. Paris is both beautiful and suprisingly gritty. The people are beautiful, but honestly do smell worse than any place I’ve ever visited.
I remember one day walking past a smartly dressed, extremely attractive couple on the way out of the cafe. The woman could easily be a model, and the guy, well, as hard as I tried to hold it in, I gagged out loud from his BO as they walked by. I’m just a typical Ugly American, I guess.
You got me there Greg. About the closest I get to social public contact is going down to the River Market on Saturdays to get my produce for the next week and have breakfast outside at <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/succotash-kansas-city"Succotash and people watch. I am sort of like a tourist in my own city.
The rudest people I met in Paris were the Japanese. They constantly disobeyed the rules. Clogged the displays and ran us over. It was all I could do not to slug them.
I grew up in Japan as well. I took the pushing and pulling in a crowd as due course, but now when not in Japan and they just push ahead of me in an unorganized queue, I also have to suppress the urge to slug the Japanese who are doing it. Chinese and Koreans are more polite in a crowd.
You’d think they were invading Manchuria or something.
@bobbo
That post deserves a (rim shot).
#2
You’re probably not Asian and you’re probably blind to what’s going on. It’s great that you’re not seeing any of these racist things going on in other countries. However, there are racist people everyone including the lovely Paris. I have family living there and they couldn’t be any more segregated if they were living here in the past. Seriously, visit the towns and cities a few miles away from your favorite places like Paris and London and you’ll be in ghetto places that the city refuses to do anything about. Ah, the good life.
Traveling exposes one to new and sometimes unpleasant experiences, which some people, westerners too, are unable to cope with. My own experience of Paris was a summer holiday spent during a garbage collector strike, when it looked like Gadansk at New Year.
>> pedro said, on August 26th, 2009 at 7:22 am
>> #20 Interesting. I’ve never heard of these kinds of events. I must look deeper into it.
I agree, it is interesting.
I have heard that some countries have a special form of this psychosis which is a kind of sensual ecstatic swooning. In Israel it is religious and in Italy it is more cultural… and sexual! I’ve heard it happens in Paris, too. (that’s the only three countries.)
Do I remember correctly that you lived in Mexico? Probably it happens there, I would guess but maybe quite a few Americans have at previous exposure to Mexican culture, reducing the shock some.