Mon Oct 23, 12:53 AM ET
PARIS (Reuters) - 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.
Previous cases include a man convinced he was the French
"Sun King", Louis XIV, and a woman who believed she was being
attacked with microwaves, the paper cited Japanese embassy
official Yoshikatsu Aoyagi as saying.
"Fragile travellers can lose their bearings. When the idea
they have of the country meets the reality of what they
discover it can provoke a crisis," psychologist Herve Benhamou
told the paper.
The phenomenon, which the newspaper dubbed "Paris
Syndrome", was first detailed in the psychiatric journal
Nervure in 2004.
Bernard Delage of Jeunes Japon, an association that helps
Japanese families settle in France, said:
"In Japanese shops, the customer is king, whereas here
assistants hardly look at them ... People using public
transport all look stern, and handbag snatchers increase the
ill feeling."
A Japanese woman, Aimi, told the paper:
"For us, Paris is a dream city. All the French are
beautiful and elegant ... And then, when they arrive, the
Japanese find the French character is the complete opposite of
their own."