Past tense for "I've always.../Ever since..."??

[WalterWills]

If I wanted to say something like "I've had an interest in foreign cultures since I was small", I'd say:

小さい時から、外国の文化に興味がありました。

However, I don't know if Japanese uses the past tense for such a sentence (like we do in English), because I suppose that implies that you've had an interest but not anymore. If not, what form would you use- ーています？

[hatch_jp]

As you know, Japanese has vague grammer regarding of tense.
You can say "小さい時から、外国の文化に興味があります。"

You can't say "～興味があています" because ある, the normal present tense of ありました, doesn't have teiru-form for continuous tense.

[WalterWills]

Thanks, hatch_jp, it's great to have a native speaker on these forums!

[markystar]

that was a great explanation!