‘Paris Syndrome’: The New York City Strain?

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  01.23.07 | 1:00 PM ET

imagePhoto: denmar, via flickr (Creative Commons).

The New York Post had some fun with a recent story about Japanese tourists in France who succumb to Paris Syndrome. The paper titled its piece Paris Leaves Japanese French Fried. Now the New Yorker’s Lauren Collins is on the case, wondering if there’s a New York City version of the syndrome that leaves travelers to the City of Light overwhelmed and in need of psychological treatment. An officer at the Japanese Consulate “does not believe in the existence of Paris syndrome, or, for that matter, a New York strain,” Collins writes, but she does report that Japanese visitors to the Big Apple do have certain traits.

“Japanese people don’t like to go online and plan their own trips,” Carol Elk said one recent morning at the offices of the Japanese Travel Bureau, on Seventh Avenue. Having worked for two years as a visit coördinator for J.T.B., Elk is familiar with the preferences, and potential disappointments, of the Nikkei-in-New York. “If you’re booking a Broadway show, it has to be Disney,” she said. “Nobody’s ever heard of ‘Wicked.’ Jazz clubs are big, and steak houses; groups want the Rainbow Room for parties.”

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She went on to detail some imperatives: hotel rooms must have bathtubs and, even for married couples, separate beds; the highest-ranking executive in a business group stays on a higher floor than his subordinates; most museums are “kind of ‘eh,’ ” but MOMA is popular because it was designed by a Japanese architect; Yankees tickets should be in left field, for optimal viewing of Matsui. Slightly less understandable was a request that Elk says she gets frequently: to have dinner at home with a regular American family. “I tell people, ‘We’ll pay you, we’ll have it catered, we’ll send someone to clean up.’ But nobody will do it in New York.”

Nobody? C’mon, New York. Step up!



1 Comment for ‘Paris Syndrome’: The New York City Strain?

Pp 12.07.07 | 9:09 AM ET

ur a loser

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