The same can be said in reverse for Japanese people on how they see the Western world: Do they assume the USA is like Hollywood or the UK being like British Television? They perhaps assume that all Americans live in a large home with a white picket fence depicting a nuclear family as if its 1950.

All they talk about US is California or New York since most movies and TV shows use either as their main setting. Is the US in real life similar to Hollywood (everyone having a nice car, big home & white picket fence)? That’s the kind of response from non-Japanese assuming Japan is like anime.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 hour ago

    I’ve been to France a couple of times, Paris once.

    • I didn’t say “bonjour” when entering shops and it didn’t seem to matter. Basically the only shops I went in were bakeries with queues so that would’ve been weird I guess.
    • We did attempt to speak French. Everyone had enough high school French that we knew “je voudrais”, numbers, and enough to point
    • I don’t remember specifically needing to stand on one side of escalators but it’s easy enough to copy what everyone else is doing
    • Being loud on public transport is rude everywhere IMO

    But it’s not like there were people going around telling people off for not abiding by rules, or people getting frosty looks everywhere. Honestly, only a minority of time was actually interacting with people - most of the time was:

    • admiring art
    • eating food

    All this to say, I think that there’s a lot more to disappointment with a trip to Paris than just getting etiquette wrong, and relating this to Japanese tourists, I would expect most to pick up on some obvious but unwritten rules quite quickly.