Love of foreign things?

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I'm wondering if anyone else can relate to this at all. As a kid, I had a Bosnian babysitter, I arguably have more memories involving her than I do my own mother during when I was a kid. I was at her house a lot, and I was around her family a ton, and got along with them reasonably well, all things considered. I'd get to eat lots of foreign food, hear lots of foreign music, and I didn't mind it at all. My sisters would complain at eating the boreks and whatever, and I'd eat it all up (I'm oddly the least food sensitive of all my family except perhaps my father.) I'd even have like Turkish coffee at like age 5. It was cool. I liked it a lot, looking back. But up until around 4th grade, I had this Bosnian babysitter, so from 3 years old, a constant in my life was basically sorta being raised by foreigners.

Fast forward a bit... In middle school, I started liking anime, well, because anime is sweet. Then I went through the stage of "Oh, I wanna be an animator and move to Japan..." and tried learning Japanese (and failed of course.) However, even after realizing, well, reality, I still liked Japanese stuff. Oddly, I got less interested in anime and video games, and more interested in Japanese music. I have quite a few gigabytes of Japanese music, from a lot of different timeframes, going from enka, to the 80s, to current. So the Japanese music has stayed constant since middle school to now. I see the Japanese as sorta "normal" though, as lots of people like Japanese stuff, and it's like, formed a big amount of other people who like it, so while it's abnormal, I don't see it as being crazily different. Though to my extent, it probably is, as for me, the "soundtrack to my life" probably is like half Japanese music in any given day, and it's been this way for a number of years.

But, fast forward more now. Probably about 2 years ago, I made a Pakistani friend. He told me a bunch about Pakistan, and also bought me some Pakistani food, and taught me to cook Pakistani food personally. I had Indian neighbors who invited me over, and cooked me Indian food, too. So then I went on a quest to learn how to cook all Indian food. That's more or less recided (maybe those things would be considered special interest kinda things.) But I may come back to Indian food in the future, but I've not made much of it in a long time.

But now, for some reason, my new foreign "special interest" seems to be Russian and maybe general Slavic. It started I guess from when I go skating, there's lots of Russian coaches and skaters there, and one of the skaters was playing a song by Angelika Varum called "Winter Cherry" and I just loved it to death, and asked him for the title and went youtube searching and found it. I ended up downloading five entire albums of Angelika Varum. Then a Russian coach played some Russian music, I downloaded about 10 songs based off one song he played of the Russian band Reflex. Now I'm trying to learn to make Russian food, partially because of being exposed to some of it through church, as my current church is Orthodox, but it's ethnically more of a Russian church, lots of Russian people there, and lots of Russian food. So now both in music and food, I'm actively seeking out Russian and Slavic...stuff. Also, compounding this, again, is my own heritage, which is part Polish (though like 3rd-4th gen, my father would make Polish food a lot, and he knew a lot of the Polish side of his family,) and all the experience being around Bosnians and Polish people as a kid.

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So, tl:dr, anyone else just seem to have a gravitation toward foreign stuff, and exploration of it? I feel like in my life, for the most part, the only people nice to me are foreigners and old people. Also, numerous times people ask about my accent, where I'm from, etc, even though I'm totally native and have lived in the same state for all of my life. So it's like I'm a foreigner in my own land anyway. I don't know whether to attribute this whole liking foreign stuff to my AS, or just my upbringing. But I don't know if it's my upbringing, because none of my sisters like foreign stuff at all really (well one is a slight fan of anime) and my sisters shared most of the same experiences growing up as me. Can anyone else relate at all to this, the sorta kinda random love of foreign things? I'd guess it'd be a special interest?

I can relate. I think it might have to do with feeling like I do not fit in with the culture I was born in. Also it seems that my social deficits can be dismissed as cultural differences and not that I am socially inept. I have had ongoing obsessions with English, Japanese, Scottish, Russian, South American, Indian (like the country), and Jordanian cultures. The ease with which I get along with people from other cultures might also be because people who are willing to travel and socialize with other cultures are less "frivolous" -being concerned overly about looks, clothes, fashion, recent trends etc.

I can relate too. I've had interest in Japan and China for many years, but also interested in much of Asia and the world in general. Anything foreign interests me and most of my friends are foreign or like travel and other cultures and languages as much as I do.

I've come across this phenomenon in books about ASDs. Apparently foreign cultures are a very common special interest and this may be because they are "another world" in which the social structure we struggle with every day is very different. Also, when visiting another culture, foreigners are generally given a great deal of leeway for behaving strangely and making social mistakes, because they are foreign, so these environments can seem very welcoming to the AS person, who is no longer seen as odd (just a foreigner!). Tony Attwood mentions that some AS people move to the country they are interested in and find themselves better socially accepted because of this phenomenon.

Japan does seem a very common passion for young people. I also went through the video games > learning Japanese > anime > Japanese music > I want to live in Japan cycle when I was a teenager. I grew out of it after a while and found other interests, but foreign cultures are a strong draw for people who struggle with their home culture and seek a sanctuary. I think historical periods (the nineteenth century is a particular interest for me) and restricted social environments like the military are popular obsessions for the same reason.

I used to be an Anglophile. Then I visited England for the first time. Maybe it was just being caught in a snowstorm at Heathrow, but that country left me with a bad impression.

Anyways, I always found I make friends easier with people of other cultures. I don't think it has much to do with one particular culture, other than cross-cultural interactions have much looser social requirements. It may help that, as an American, I'm rather quiet, which runs pleasantly against the stereotype many have about us.

This interest in all things foreign has consumed my life. I'm glad I live in Seattle where there are restaurants from countries like Greece, Japan, China, India, Ethiopia, Italy, Vietnam, Trinidad, Mexico, Brazil, Afghanistan, India, Egypt and many others. When I was 11 years old I was taken to Chinese movies by my grandfather every Saturday. He's Chinese so he didn't have to bother with the subtitles like I did. I imagine my past and current interest in classical music has a strong foreign bent as most of the music I have are German (Mozart, Brahms, List, Beethoven), Russian (Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov), Polish (Chopin) and French (Bizet, Chabrier, Ravel), British (Wessley, Brian, Boughton) Spanish, Asian, and Hungarian. My past flings have been Pilipino and Vietnamese. Even these short stories and novellas I write (The Road to Hanoi, Wetland, etc) have a foreign bent to them.

I find the diversity of our special interests rather fascinating, myself.

And no, I've never been fascinated by other cultures, but I am fascinated by music--listening to it, and when I was a tween/teen, looking up the lyrics while listening to it.

I used to be completely obsessed with Japan and anime when I was a child/teenager, and I also went through a phase where most of the music I listened to was Swedish or Finnish dance/club music. I have also had interests in the countries of Sweden and England because some of my favorite movies have taken place there. Right now I am trying out Kpop music thanks to a couple of Korean dance songs that have become popular in the States recently.

wow, that's scary, that's pretty much exactly the ret*d reason i'm in china today. don't get me wrong. i continue to find learning the language a unique and fulfilling challenge, and most chinese people are hospitable as hell. the leeway thing is for real, i think especially in this kind of inclusive collectivist culture.
but on the other hand, for the same reason that people give you all kinds of help and hospitality (you're special, there's not that many foreigners in many parts of china), people stop and stare at you on the street, and you constantly hear people, even people who know you by name, refer to you just as foreigner. it gets f*****g old, especially for someone like many of us, who just wanted to blend into the shadows, so to speak.
also, while there are relatively few foreign people here, there are enough for chinese people who encounter foreign people more often to know, "uhh... that guy's weird and can't do social things very well. those other foreign people didn't have that many problems." so eventually it does come out, you know?
so my point overall is, don't come to get away from your social problems. you'll just find new ones and maybe even a lot of the old ones will resurface in the end. that's not to say don't come. it's cool to explore the world, build a skill for a new language, and expand your horizons.

i grew up on japanese food, courtesy of my late japanese mother. she also loved french things [as do many japanese folk] so i was exposed to frenchie stuff as well.

I'm xenophile.

I have always had an interest in Russia and the Soviet Union. Part of that comes from growing up during the latter part of the Cold War and the Soviet Union being so enigmatic, but some of it comes from my Russian heritage. Back in the 80's, relatives of mine came to visit our family from the USSR and they brought several presents from home. I got a toy Lunochod I rover and a polar exploration vehicle. 30 years later, they are among my most prized possessions. I hope to some day own other things from the USSR, such as a fully automatic AKM (if the laws were changed so that it were legal) and a car-like a Lada 2101 or even a ZAZ 965. Were I really ambitious, I would probably try to import an ekranoplan (Google it, you'll be amazed). The thing that amazes me the most is just how many interesting technologies were created under communist rule. To me, they're like Pokemon-I gotta catch them all!

I really love foreign stuff - cuisine, art, music, language, different facial features, anything at all. I'm an Italophile and have been for as long as I can remember. But, I love reading and learning about other cultures too. For a few years, I had a strong yearning to learn about anything Scandinavian, especially anything related to Iceland, although I've never been to any Scandinavian countries yet, even though it's very near here (it's too expensive). I love to travel, although I tend to stick with Europe and North America. My husband and I had a horrible experience in Morocco and we've been put off straying outwith our comfort zone.

Last edited by Mummy_of_Peanut on 02 Oct 2012, 4:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am a child of the universe

Dutch dad[part French] Russian mother[raised in Syria and Turkey] myself born in Pakistan but raised in New Zealand

I mostly identify with northern Europe, as NZ has always been a drag for me culturally. Many ex friends married German women, these friends are engineers.

I'm thinking of immigrating to northern Europe, preferably Scandinavia.... and I have a euro passport

I want to be around my own people now, [instead of this lot] wherever they can be....

I seem to find myself entangled with Japanese and Scandinavian culture; most often it's Japanese culture. I feel as if I'm the type of person that fits into their social circle. Nevertheless, I'm still skeptical of traditions, such as the myth that if you stick your chop sticks into your food while eating, bad luck will happen inevitably.

As for Scandinavian culture, it's usually music and demographics that I'm interested in. There are a lot of really good Power Metal bands that I know of that have originated from Sweden that barely get any international recognition. Dragonland is an example (not to be confused with Dragonforce, they're not Swedish!).

This.