SAY CHEESE!(The Talk of the Town)

Now joining Sao Paulo fever and the Hong Kong flu is Paris syndrome, a form of psychiatric collapse prevalent in young Japanese tourists on their first visit to Paris. Each year, according to Dr. Hiroaki Ota, about a dozen vacationers suffer from "irritability, a feeling of fear, obsession, depressed mood, insomnia, and an impression of persecution by the French"; their mental breakdowns, as the BBC reported last month, are brought on by a buildup of excitement, followed by such Gallic letdowns as insufficiently picturesque sights and rude waiters. Given the recent record-breaking influx of foreign visitors to New York (forty-four million in 2006!), you have to wonder: if the service at La Tour d'Argent can fell a fragile traveller, what sort of anxieties might be sown by a city as gruff as this one?

"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 coordinator 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." When she was asked if her clients had high expectations of New York, Elk replied, "Where do I start?" She recounted a story about a man, in town to run the marathon, whose name had been misspelled on his nametag. J.T.B. had been forced to write him a letter of apology."You'd think the Ark of the Covenant had been stolen!" Elk said.

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."

That afternoon, Elk fulfilled the wish of a group of Japanese accountants, taking a busload of them to tour a storefront ...