I used to have Russia as a special interest.
I have a special interest in the Amish although I do not know any personally.
Japan is very interesting.
What particularly is Polish food?
Australia was my interest as a child and still is too. I also have relatives there.
Roman Britain, early medieval Scotland and Wales.
Britain and Ireland. I spent 4 months in London, years ago, and that was by far the happiest time of my life. I'd come home. I dream of going back permanently. Since working is probably not possible for me (I can do plenty of useful things, just can't handle the NTs and stress) it seems unlikely, but i still hope. Marriage of convience, maybe?
I like reading about Mongolia. Something just strikes me as almost romantic about it, with the wide spaces and no people, and with the history that it has.
I spent more than ten years in India when by chance I got a job there (when I was still young :-)), so that country naturally became my special interest.
Spain, Taiwan/Chinese culture, Israel/Jews, Rroma/Gypsies, UK, and now Colombia are some countries/cultures I have been or still am obsessed with... for varying periods of time and some of these I revisit more than others...
In most cases it's because I had been there, or knew people from there, or had ancestors of that culture...
I find Japan really interesting, mostly because they have the Kowaii culture there. It's like a cute culture, based around stuff like Hello Kitty. I really like the concept that instead of trying to attain impossible standards of beauty, you can just be cute instead. I think cuteness is much easier to acheive.
I also like Germany, mostly because I really like the band Rammstein from there. I also like their sort of dark look at things. Like the Bodyworlds exhibit, I don't think any other country would've considered making medical models out of real corpses. I also heard the Goth culture is really popular in Germany.
Actually I think the language is kind of cool as well, I managed to pick up the accent easily. I sometimes think perhaps I was German in a past life. I was considering learning more of the language, but I don't know how difficult it would be. If anyone has taken German, maybe you could tell me if it's that hard to understand. It can't be as hard as it is trying to learn Japanese, I tried to..but whenever I look at their symbols for writing, all I see is squiggles.
Violet-Yoshi, German is not an easy language (very grammar-heavy) but there's no way it's as hard as Japanese. Japanese has several writing systems, for example. German just requires you to learn a few extra letters or spelling marks that we don't have in English.
Just an idea: you could learn "conversational" Japanese with the romanji writing (same letters as English) and move on to learning the other writing systems (hiragana and katakana, I think). I have never tried to learn Japanese, but i imagine from trying to learn a little Chinese that once you get some basis of the sounds, it could then help you to then attach a character or phonetic syllable "letter' to that sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system
Also (compared to Chinese), only the Kanji system of Japanese writing is characters. The other systems are phonetic. I suppose this makes it more difficult, but on the other hand there is more possibility of symbols which you can relate to the sounds of the language.
People who already speak Japanese can probably explain better than my attempt here...
I'm really interested in Sweden and Swedish culture. I've been there a lot in the past year, and I'm currently learning the language :grin:
I spent the worst five months of my life in Sweden! That was my Erasmus exchange year that wasn't.
to AFF hedgehog. 
