Scotland: there’s an ugliness at its very root. I should have stayed in Japan.

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.