With the Light

Thanks riseru / lir-illir - hope you don’t mind me posting this! :) 

I think the only advice I can give you is, if you are thinking of doing an exchange then you should be able to find out through the school you’re at in your home country about any support available at your potential school/university in Japan. If you do an exchange then you will be best person to judge whether spending time there long-term will be good for you or not. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. 

I know it’s been difficult for him to make it on his own, and he came back to the United States in the beginning to frequently visit family and old friends, but he’s slowly becoming more and more adjusted to Japanese life the more time he spends there.

“The Reason I Jump” is also a book written by an autistic Japanese boy that gives some insights.

If you want to use it to describe a person, you would use の as it is a noun, 「自閉症の（人）」. You don’t really need it if you’re just talking about yourself though,「私は自閉症です。」is enough.

One of my favorite things about With the Light (both the manga & the TV drama) is that it is a series that tries to depict an ideal way of interacting with disabled, particularly autistic, children and their families. But while doing that it doesn’t shy away at all from showing just how horribly ableist society, teachers, strangers, extended family, peers, etc. can be - but also parents. With the Light doesn’t paint the parents as saints, but often shows really ugly sides of what parents of autistic kids will often do. The TV drama shows it a bit more than the manga series. These moments are always highlighted by the narrative, either implicitly or explicitly, as wrong. While the parents are still humanized and sympathized with, With the Light isn’t afraid to show that abuse happens, or that they can have the best intentions at heart and still harm their children, or be selfish in their desires surrounding them, or not really understand their own children. All the other media I see is afraid to do that. Parents of autistic children are brave warriors, they love their children. Just by having an autistic child, somehow they have proven that they do everything right and everything out of love. They understand their children better than anyone - how dare other people try to tell them anything about their kids when they’re the ones who struggle with them everyday. With the Light (the manga a little more so than the TV drama) is about raising an autistic child, but it isn’t about the parents. They’re never depicted as suffering because their son is autistic. Their son is, largely depicted as happy and healthy, but when he is depicted as suffering it’s because of ableism. And that ableism comes from everywhere - from the school system, from grandparents, from friends, from strangers, and yeah, even from them, the parents. My favorite episode of the TV drama of With the Light is Episode 5. Which, among other things, makes up for every horrible symbolic use of a puzzle or puzzle piece in an autism narrative for me. Also, for the side of me that is a film student, it’s brilliantly crafted. Some things this episode talks about: communication as self-advocacy (even very simple communication), the horribleness of autistic people only being seen as worthwhile if they have a savant skill, the abuse of taking away an autistic child’s special interest (even if said special interest isn’t “worthwhile” or they spend “too much time” with it), the abuse of always forcing your child to “improve” to think it is wrong to do the same thing over and over, or of pushing your kids too hard no matter where they are at, and more great things that should be discussed much more often. Anyway, I’ve put together the highlights of the episode (which is a lot, it’s hard to cut it up too much) into the video above and I really recommend everyone watch it.  

One of my favorite things about With the Light (both the manga & the TV drama) is that it is a series that tries to depict an ideal way of interacting with disabled, particularly autistic, children and their families. But while doing that it doesn’t shy away at all from showing just how horribly ableist society, teachers, strangers, extended family, peers, etc. can be - but also parents. With the Light doesn’t paint the parents as saints, but often shows really ugly sides of what parents of autistic kids will often do. The TV drama shows it a bit more than the manga series. These moments are always highlighted by the narrative, either implicitly or explicitly, as wrong. While the parents are still humanized and sympathized with, With the Light isn’t afraid to show that abuse happens, or that they can have the best intentions at heart and still harm their children, or be selfish in their desires surrounding them, or not really understand their own children. All the other media I see is afraid to do that. Parents of autistic children are brave warriors, they love their children. Just by having an autistic child, somehow they have proven that they do everything right and everything out of love. They understand their children better than anyone - how dare other people try to tell them anything about their kids when they’re the ones who struggle with them everyday. With the Light (the manga a little more so than the TV drama) is about raising an autistic child, but it isn’t about the parents. They’re never depicted as suffering because their son is autistic. Their son is, largely depicted as happy and healthy, but when he is depicted as suffering it’s because of ableism. And that ableism comes from everywhere - from the school system, from grandparents, from friends, from strangers, and yeah, even from them, the parents. My favorite episode of the TV drama of With the Light is Episode 5. Which, among other things, makes up for every horrible symbolic use of a puzzle or puzzle piece in an autism narrative for me. Also, for the side of me that is a film student, it’s brilliantly crafted. Some things this episode talks about: communication as self-advocacy (even very simple communication), the horribleness of autistic people only being seen as worthwhile if they have a savant skill, the abuse of taking away an autistic child’s special interest (even if said special interest isn’t “worthwhile” or they spend “too much time” with it), the abuse of always forcing your child to “improve” to think it is wrong to do the same thing over and over, or of pushing your kids too hard no matter where they are at, and more great things that should be discussed much more often. Anyway, I’ve put together the highlights of the episode (which is a lot, it’s hard to cut it up too much) into the video above and I really recommend everyone watch it.  

I decided the With the Light fandom needed a little color in it