I would say it’s probably because expressive people are easier to understand. They wear their emotions on their sleeve more so there’s less confusion.Lucas88 wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 4:07 pmAn old tutor of mine once mentioned that a disproportionate number of autistic people gravitate towards Japan. She asked me why that could be. After pausing for a moment to reflect upon the question, I explained to her that Japan is an ideal place for those who enjoy solitude since the people generally mind their own business and leave others alone. Nobody will approach you and try to force you to socialize since that would be considered impolite. You'll just be like a ghost to most people. Whenever you go out, there's little chance that you'll end up being overwhelmed by unwanted social approaches. That might make the country more suitable for autistic people more on the shy or reserved side.Outcast9428 wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 2:29 pm@Lucas88 Its interesting how autism can cause a person to either seek out an extremely reserved society like Japan or an extremely expressive one like Latin America. Japanese language does tend to be pretty straightforward with the words. Not really having conjugations. If it wasn’t for the writing system I’d say Japanese is one of the most simple languages in the world. I can understand the words and pronounce them pretty easily even compared to Romance languages.
Autism is related to a need for exact precision though which is why we either want a lot of complexity or a lot of simplicity but rarely something that is in the middle. I imagine the Romance languages being very tough for a Japanese person to understand, even compared to English.
But what about Japan's complex social etiquette? Couldn't that be a problem for autistic people? Yes, it certainly could, but as a White foreigner you won't be held to the same level of expectations as a Japanese person would. The rules will be somewhat relaxed for you. Deviations from proper etiquette will be attributed to cultural misunderstandings rather than blatant nonconformity. Reasonable people won't be too hard on you.
As for me, I much prefer Mediterranean and Latin cultures, but I think that's more due to my own soul constitution than autism. I'm naturally an expressive, wild and spontaneous person, much more like a Spaniard or an Italian than an Anglo. It's simply that autism has resulted in social impairment which made me somewhat avoidant of social situations. But it was never that I longed for solitude. If my preference for Mediterranean and Latin cultures does indeed have any relation to autism, it will be because people from those expressive cultures usually encourage me to be expressive myself and give me something to work with. Conversely I find nothing more awkward than attempting to interact with a shy or reserved person who is largely taciturn, disengaged and doesn't give me much to work with. Most British people are like that. Many Japanese people are like that too (this is usually because they don't know how to deal with foreigners). But Mediterraneans and Latinos almost always proactively engage in conversation. That makes everything much easier for me.
With regard to Japanese, the grammar is more simple than that of many European languages in some ways since there are no personal conjugations and verb functions such as past tense, negation, passive, causative, desiderative, conditional, etc. are expressed by simple suffixes which are agglutinated to the verb stem in a logical sequence. However, in order to speak Japanese like a native, you need to learn various honorific and humble forms as well as an assortment of sentence-final particles or combinations of particles which express various different nuances. This can make post-intermediate Japanese quite difficult to master. As far as pronunciation goes, the basic phonemes are generally simpler than those of European languages and so it is easy to reach a level of pronunciation that allows you to be understood, but Japanese phonology includes pitch accent and so it might be harder to achieve native-like pronunciation.
I actually have the experience of teaching Spanish to a Japanese woman. She had just come back from a vacation in Costa Rica and was in love with the culture and begged me to teach her the language. I would go to her temple every evening and give her lessons in Spanish. She would often prepare nice cakes for me and we'd often have leisurely chats about philosophy and Buddhism during breaks. Anyway, I tried to teach her the basic verb forms, made all kinds of charts, and came up with example sentences, but in the end the reasons for each of the conjugations were lost on her. No matter how much I explained she couldn't understand why first person ends in -o, second person ends in -as, third person ends in -a, first person plural ends in -amos, etc. Then one day she asked me to teach her past tense conjugations and when I did she was like "this is impossible!". Yes, Romance languages are difficult for Japanese speakers.
I’d say the reason autistic people gravitate towards Japan is because the Japanese are more biologically similar to them. Neurotypicals in Britain typically score a 16 on autism scores whereas the Japanese typically score a 22.5. At 26 and above Asperger’s becomes a possibility and autism is considered a definite at 32 or above. The men in Japan score a 24 on average so they are really really close to the 26 score.
So basically the average Japanese person, especially the average Japanese man, is already bordering on a very mild form of autism.
) and Shooto events. Hugo Savinovich who did the Spanish language commentary for the WWF back in the day was freakin' legendary. So were Carlos Cabrera and Marcelito "El Guapo" Rodríguez (Mayuuuuuya!!! 
