At a japanese barbecue in Amsterdam I talked to a Hitachi manager who had just arrived in the Netherlands (but who had been working in Germany and Mexico before). Over a glass of wine he told me that he and his family boycott french products ever since the french nuclear bomb tests in the south pacific. When I asked, if he had not considered the french refusal to go to war in Iraq as a good enough reason to reconsider the boycott he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
At the time of those nuclear bomb tests I had just moved from France to Sweden. Shortly after arriving I got to exhibit in the university’s art gallery. I had invited some friends of mine from France to participate and already announced that in the papers. The communication with my friends was a bit slow and I got annoyed with them and aIstarted to have doubts about the quality of their contribution. I decided to just close the blinds of the gallery’s shop front and to put up posters, explaining that the exhibition did not take place due to a “boycott of french culture”. I watched people reading the posters from inside the gallery. Many of them nodded to themselves when they had finished.
At the barbecue I also learned that the japanese companies with offices in Amsterdam play baseball against each other regularly and that japanese men working in Europe have difficulties picking up european women while their female colleagues find it rather easy to pick up european men.