First impressions on return to Scotland after a 23-hour journey home from Japan via Paris and Amsterdam aren’t good. A mother swears loudly and aggressively at her toddler for dragging his heels slightly as one of the passengers walks through Passport Control and straight into the long arms of the law. Frighteningly fat families with grey smokers’ skin waddle through customs with Duty-free bottles clanking in their poly bags, snarling in that angry Glasgow growl. The girls at the checkout in W H Smith’s stand gossiping, ignoring their only customer whose complaints are met with shrugged shoulders. The taxi driver seems horrified to find that we have three separate drop-off points and makes his feelings clear with grunts and grumbles – I’m thinking that it’s either his first night as an airport taxi driver or he simply doesn’t like making money. When he does drop me off, he refuses to go into my street because there’s “never any space”, although there’s enough room for at least a transit van right outside my front door. As I drag my luggage across the road, I see the street is strewn with litter, as always, and there’s an old unwanted carpet dumped on the corner. Later, I’ll find out that it’s been there for a week.
The next morning is unusually bright and warm, so I decide to take my son for a walk in the park. I see a vacant spot and head over with the intention of letting him crawl free on the grass, but I can’t find two square feet that aren’t full of discarded cigarette butts, something any eleven-and-a-half-month-old wouldn’t hesitate to put in their mouth and chew. I think about those little boxes that Japanese smokers carry, tins to keep the fag-ends in until they get home or find the nearest bin. Then we turn and go home and I watch the news when we get in: some fucking arsehole vandalised the Cenotaph war memorial in George Square on Saturday, the sixty-fifth anniversary of D-Day.
Sometimes it’s very difficult to feel proud of being Scottish, especially when you’ve spent eight days in a country far more civilised. Japan is like Scotland’s mirror world where everything is backwards: high life expectancy, healthy diet, great education, proud work ethic, good manners. It is a culture of respect and consideration, of propriety and compassion. It’s not perfect by any means, but it feels like the safest country in the world, and statistically it’s probably very close. Petty crime and random acts of violence are rare, as is obesity, chronic alcoholism and heart disease. The elderly are not only fit and healthy, but treated with the respect they’ve earned, while children are brought up to understand the importance of learning and civility. I enjoyed some great traditional Japanese experiences – I drank from the holy spring at the Kiyomizu temple, relaxed in the genuinely affecting serenity of the Kennin-ji, and savoured many local foods (although I don’t think I’ll try raw chicken again anytime soon). But it’s the little cultural details that you notice most. The multiple recycling bins outside convenience stores, the immaculately packaged and meticulously wrapped shopping, the removal of footwear upon entering restaurants, the sharing of umbrellas when the rain pours, a general dedication to cleanliness and altruism all round. Perhaps my spectacles are still a little rose-tinted but when compared to Scotland, Japan seems like a veritable utopia.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and a great deal of its people. It has some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet and we’ve contributed a disproportionate amount to world culture for such a small nation. But there’s an ugliness at its very root, an aggression and insolence that I find intolerable, and I’m afraid that it’s far too late to change it. I intend to live here all my life, so all I can really do is the best that I can and hope that others will too.
We went for another walk in the park today. As I tried to reattach my son’s shoe to his foot for the umpteenth time at the pedestrian crossing, I didn’t notice the green man signal to walk. The woman beside us realised I’d missed it and kindly let me know just in time to make it across the road. On the way home, I had to duck under the overhanging trees on the public side of the college wall and the old man doing the same in the opposite direction smiled at my son and said, ‘It’s just like a jungle!’ I saw a girl finish her cigarette and watched carefully to see how she disposed of it: she walked twenty feet to the pub’s outside ashtray and dropped it in there. Maybe Scotland’s bonnie after all.
AIDAN MOFFAT
Reader Comments
June 12th, 2009
2:09 pm
Wow. Great article, it’s always nice to know that other people can always lift you with subtle actions and completely discount previous experiences of a place.
June 12th, 2009
2:26 pm
ace article.
June 12th, 2009
3:39 pm
gret article vice. its good to see that someone views scotland in the same way i view england. its just sad that you have to wade through the quagmire of uneducated, ignorant, lazy jeremy kyle viewers in order to find some nice bits.
June 12th, 2009
7:24 pm
Try living in Japan for a year then coming back to Scotland. Culture shock on the way back was waaaaaay worse than on the way in.
June 12th, 2009
7:46 pm
It’s too bad the Japanese make it so hard to join their club. I like how they just sorta feel bad for you that you’re not Japanese too. It’s not racism so much as pity.
June 12th, 2009
7:47 pm
I don’t follow your pity theory. Japanese are more obsessed with Western culture than Westerners. Sure, they have their own creations like Pokémon and other crazy/stupid shit like coffin hotels, but all-in-all I don’t think they feel superior at all.
June 12th, 2009
7:47 pm
nice photoshopped mohawk and duplicate swords
June 12th, 2009
7:47 pm
everyone should carry those little tins for their cig-ends! i always feel like an ass just toss my cigarettes in the street.
thanks japan…for another awesome invention.
June 12th, 2009
7:48 pm
Japanese society seems incredibly repressed. Scotland’s just pretty white trash.
June 12th, 2009
7:48 pm
Well said. Made me a bit nostalgic for the two years I lived and worked in Korea.
And coming home to New England had the same effect on me. The shock of being reminded just how vulgar we can be. The native accent thats suddenly grating & shrill, the litter & filth, the “fuck off” attitude everyone seems to wear like a badge of honor. But it’s home. And it’s what defines you. Just remember, in a bar fight, your new Japanese friends are more than likely to run and hide in the ladies room..
June 12th, 2009
7:48 pm
U-S-A! U-S-A! Yo, Adrian! I did it!
June 12th, 2009
7:49 pm
I had a similar experience upon exiting the plane and walking through the terminal in ATL after my return from Japan. The people (my people) seemed like poorly dressed, rude as shit giants!
June 13th, 2009
9:22 pm
Neener - that’s not a Photoshop, i can assure you. It was taken in the Toei Studios theme park in Kyoto - they dressed me up and snapped me within ten minutes, all for 3,000 yen. I am wearing a headpiece though, obviously.
June 13th, 2009
10:54 pm
As a scottish person there is sometimes nothing better than talking how how much you hate scotland. Then something happens for you to love it again. I guess I just remembered that what’s your article is about.
awesome
June 14th, 2009
2:11 pm
Considering I’m going back after being in japan for two months I hope I find London a little better, but nice article.
June 14th, 2009
6:41 pm
ditto! after a year in Hiroshima before returning to the motherland, I love, a lot, and hate, just a wee bit, the two places equally. it’s a weird feeling but i wouldn’t have it any other way.
June 14th, 2009
9:45 pm
this is possibly the least enlightening article i’ve ever read. how you always see the bad side of where you come from, how scotland has social problems, how the japanese are so dainty, and people in the west are uncouth beasts. like, really? no shit? you could take the view that there is an “ugliness” at the root at every culture, and certainly Japan would not do well under such scrutiny (what is considered “vanilla” porn over there is bordering on sex crime). Or you could just choose to take what you want out of the place you reside
June 15th, 2009
10:55 am
FUCK YOU
June 15th, 2009
10:55 am
shit i can’t believe someone’s written this shit
FUCK YOU TWICE
June 15th, 2009
10:56 am
…and this is the man who wrote the beautiful couplet, “It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen/But you’ve no idea where that cock has been”
June 15th, 2009
10:57 am
aw skratcho, did this get your kilt panties in a wad? poor, poor scot. you’re not really jealous of raw chicken are you?
June 15th, 2009
1:06 pm
nah fuck you you little fucking prick. Why don’t you just fuck off back there if you love it so much. It’s cos you live in glasgow and that’s your own arshole choice isn’t it. dundee’s only two hours away on the train. You ever hear of the rape of Nanjing? That was about the time we were building the city of Tel Aviv to modernist principles in the internaitonal style. That’s actually where ergonomic and the word conurbation come from. You’re a self hating scot. the worst thing about this place isn’t actually the neds or any of that it’s the assholes liike you who go abroad and come back and tell us what we’re all doing wrong. Who gives a shit?
Leave glasgow.
fuck you
June 16th, 2009
2:27 am
Get tae fuck
June 18th, 2009
8:44 am
Dear Smut,
yes, i’ve heard of the rape of Nanking. I’ve also heard of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, to name only two recent and disturbing events in which our glorious nation has been complicit. In fact, were we to judge any nation on its past atrocities, we should all be ashamed to be part of the British Empire, which surely has one of the most hideous records in history… and God help you if you happen to be German.
My comments are nothing to do with history, they are very much of the here and now and concern a cultural sickness in contemporary Britain, and specifically Scotland because that’s where i’m from. To suggest that this exists solely in Glasgow is ridiculous. I was born and bred in Falkirk and have also lived in Ayrshire, and i can assure you that these problems are nationwide. I’ve never lived in Dundee but i do have friends there and they seem to support this idea, but perhaps you live in a particularly utopian part of the city that we’ve never witnessed. Maybe you should leave it now and then and have a look around.
If the worst thing about Scotland is people like me who experience other cultures around the world and seek to improve our own by accepting the merit in alternative lifestyles and admitting the failings of our native country, then maybe we’ll be alright after all. Personally, what offends me most about any nation is blind, flag-waving patriotism and loyalty; the refusal to indulge in honest criticism. I am not a self-hating Scot in the least - if you had any comprehension skills at all, you would have gathered that i love my country and the intention of my criticism is to make it a better place for our future generations. If that makes me an arsehole, then i am proud to be so.
July 17th, 2009
11:45 pm
Well said Aidan. I both love and (only sometimes)hate aspects of our country. At least its no borin eh!