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A group of Japanese tour operators is to begin cleaning the streets of Paris - because they claim the city is too dirty for their own highly disciplined nationals to visit.

Nine Tokyo-based travel agents will send their Paris reps out with bin bags to remove litter from the around the Eiffel Tower and Trocadero gardens this weekend.

Paris is one of the top destinations for Japanese tourists, with 600,000 visiting the French capital last year.

But numbers have fallen in the wake of the terrorist attacks , and the Tokyo tour operators believe making the city tidier could lure their compatriots back.

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A Paris city hall spokesman said: “They say they want to make the city cleaner for their own people, who have very high standards.

“But in recent years Paris has actually become one of the cleanest cities in the world.”

(Image: Getty)

The council launched a massive drive to clean the streets four years ago after one council chief claimed the mess on Paris’s streets was to blame for the city not winning the 2012 Olympics.

The city’s former environment head Yves Contassot said: “By 2001 Paris was the dog poo capital of the world.

“It was such a problem that the Japanese used it as an argument for opposing our candidacy for to host the games.”

Paris is also regularly voted the ‘rudest’ city on earth for foreign visitors.

Some Japanese find the locals so hostile that they develop what has been termed Paris Syndrome, when they suffer a full psychiatric breakdown because the city does meet the romantic vision they had imagined from home.

On average, around 12 Japanese tourists a year fall victim to it, mainly women in their 30s with high expectations of what may be their first trip abroad.

The Japanese embassy has a 24-hour hotline for those suffering from severe culture shock, and can help find hospital treatment or repatriation for anyone in need.