Culture clash

You've got to laugh really...

Reading the BBC News page this morning I came across this:

The reality of Paris does not always live up to the dream. A dozen or so Japanese tourists a year have to be repatriated from the French capital, after falling prey to what's become known as "Paris syndrome". That is what some polite Japanese tourists suffer when they discover that Parisians can be rude or the city does not meet their expectations. The experience can apparently be too stressful for some and they suffer a psychiatric breakdown. Around a million Japanese travel to France every year.

Many of the visitors come with a deeply romantic vision of Paris - the cobbled streets, as seen in the film Amelie, the beauty of French women or the high culture and art at the Louvre. The reality can come as a shock. An encounter with a rude taxi driver, or a Parisian waiter who shouts at customers who cannot speak fluent French, might be laughed off by those from other Western cultures. But for the Japanese - used to a more polite and helpful society in which voices are rarely raised in anger - the experience of their dream city turning into a nightmare can simply be too much. This year alone, the Japanese embassy in Paris has had to repatriate four people with a doctor or nurse on board the plane to help them get over the shock. They were suffering from "Paris syndrome".

It was a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, Professor Hiroaki Ota, who first identified the syndrome some 20 years ago. On average, up to 12 Japanese tourists a year fall victim to it, mainly women in their 30s with high expectations of what may be their first trip abroad. The Japanese embassy has a 24-hour hotline for those suffering from severe culture shock, and can help find hospital treatment for anyone in need. However, the only permanent cure is to go back to Japan - never to return to Paris.

Now, the rudeness of the Parisians is legendary - from my experiences in Burgundy I can confirm that a lot of the time my family have been made more welcome than the average Parisian because even the rest of France can't handle their arrogance. It says it all that the recent change in the format of car number plates in France was largely put in place to make Parisian cars less easily indentifiable because they were apparently being vandalised when they ventured out of the capital. So, come the Angevin Revolution, the entire city is going to be sent to an upper-class British Charm School for a thorough lesson in Good Manners (where, hopefully, they will also be taught to clear up the dog-poo littered pavements which is the first thing which comes to mind whenever Paris is mentioned...). BUT... if that makes my gentle readers think I have any sympathy for the Japanese they couldn't be more wrong.

I was at Oxford for my post-grad and I needn't tell anybody with even a passing familiarity with the place what a royal pain in the bum the Japanese tourists are. They are quite happy to bang on about respect when it suits THEM, or indeed when you visit their country, but you don't hear much about it when they're scampering all over the place trying to find the best angles for their interminable souvenir photographs. Summertime was positive torture - air conditioning being virtually unknown in most colleges, to get any sort of relief from the heat you had to open your windows. OK if you're on the first or second floors, but if your room was at ground level this was viewed by the Japanese as a golden opportunity. I can't count the number of times I was minding my own business in the MCR, reading the papers and having a swift coffee, only to discover one of the little pests had shoved their camera in the open window and were merrily snapping away. That wasn't the worst of it - as some of the showers were half-underground at my college, and therefore had small windows at ground-level, I have also been snapped whilst at my ablutions. And yes, as a result I have unbounded sympathy for incarcerated animals in zoos, because that is how it felt. It was absolutely pointless putting up 'No Entry' signs if there was an private area - in fact these almost had the opposite effect, one might as well have erected a 'Come and look at this very special thing with your ten cameras, why don't you?' poster instead, such was the total disregard for the quality of life of anybody actually living in Oxford. Where's the respect there, my little Nipponese pals, huh??

So, in short, I think BOTH the Parisians and the Japanese, for varying reasons, need to have a kick up the jacksi. Unfortunately I can't see that happening any time soon...