http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15391010?GT1=8618
This is both incredibly sweet and incredibly sad:
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.
It’s patronising, I know, but I love that the Japanese are so sweet and innocent, and have such high expectations. To willingly overlook every single American movie with anti-French jokes and comments about the rudeness of the locals takes a special kind of dedication. I remember being yelled at by my first Parisien (it took 2 days, as the rest were incredibly polite) and feeling like everything was right in the world again. Unfortunately, it’s for people like these that Epcot was invented. I’ll have to hand out brochures to those chagrined tourists in my own city who wish to see red-jacketed mounties, or come to Eastern Canada in August hoping for great skiing.