Latino Liars

I was teaching some high school girls at a private language school and they said that they dont want to marry a Japanese guy, they want a foreign guy. This means caucasian guy generally but I joked
"Oh, you want to marry a chinese guy?"
"Nooo!" they screamed. Yuck.
"Indonesia?"
'Nooo! Speaks English."
"Oh I see, you want to marry a Philipino guy..."
"No way. Europe guy."
This probably means the UK or France, mayyybe Germany so I said
"Oh, I guy from Greece? Portugal?"
"NO! Oh, but xxx-san wants to marry an Italian." one gilr joked.
Her friend made a face. "No, no no! They are liars." she said.
"Oh really?" I asked.
The girl hesitated. "Italia or maybe Spain, I forget, but they lie."

I figured this was one of those things people just talked about, we all do it. Such and such a country has hot women, this countries people are good lovers etc. But the girls continued.

"My textbook said spain or Italy people are liars..."

It seems that thier boks were trying to explain cultural differences and that unlike in Japan where honesty is a virtue, people in Spain or maybe Italy lie a lot. But the book went on, it's ok to tell a lie in these countries because it helps ease things socially, maybe so as not to hurt someone's feelings.

Ok, I didnt read the original texts, but I must say I'm often shocked at the knd of armchair stereotypical anthropology that gets passed off as fact in a lot of the books I have to use here.

Anyway the girls were shocked that such a dishonest society could possibly exist and continue to function. So I explained that it is a virtue here. There are two ways of speaking here, honmae and tatemae, the latter being a kind of polite lie, such as "Oh that dress suits you", "This cake is delicious," and "Oh we must do lunch."

I imagine that most if not all human (maybe even chimpanzee) societies do this to an extent. Funny enough, in other conversations, Japanese are usually proud of thier ability to distinguis between the two and are surprised to learn that it exists in places like the USA where they are taught that Americans walk around saying and doing anything on thier mind without regard to other people's feelings or the consequences. (let's not get into foreign policy though...). But yes, at other times most Japanese fel that thier society is more honest than others. (This is natural Im sure.)