Christmas & Hogmany 2012 in Scotland

In December 2012, I once again made my way home to Scotland. I couldn't resist spending another Christmas with my family and friends.

I'd done the same thing a year earlier, and this was my second trip home since leaving for Japan. I was feeling pretty excited. The last twelve months in Japan had been the longest time I had spent out of my home country in all of my life, and I was keen to get back home and to reconnect with everyone I missed. Again, I made this a three week trip.

The long-journey was the same as it always was coming back and forth to Japan. The huge flights are actually fairly enjoyable to me, though, since I fly using BA and I love watching all of the free films available on their entertainment units built into the chairs. Of course, as always, I was shattered by the time I finally arrived at Edinburgh Airport (though, naturally, I'd stopped to have a pint of cider while at London Heathrow). I once again met my parents, who swiftly drove me home. It was great to see them again, and my mother had dinner waiting for me as soon as I stepped through the doors. The house was stocked up with supplies of all my favourite foods, and I was buzzing for the three weeks ahead.

As a pleasant surprise, a package was waiting for me upon my arrival; a copy of Dancing Meurtes, a book written by my friend Danny Blackwell who I hadn't seen since he left Japan in July. I helped proof-read the book earlier in the year, and had offered some suggestions during it's development, so it was great to finally hold a copy in my hands.

Some sad news, though; I would not have access to my car this time at home. My sister had been using the car in my absence, and it had broken down to a significant engine problem. Being quite an old car, it wasn't worth it to repair it, and there was no point in buying a new car simply for my three weeks at home. As such, I was resigned to being dependent upon lifts and perhaps borrowing my sister's own can when it become available... or, I would have, if her car hadn't similarly broken down during my time at home. Bah!

I was also keen to see what the state of the high street in my hometown of Kirkcaldy would be like. Over the past twelve months, many stores had been closing as part of a general trend of store closures across the UK, and I knew that Kirkcaldy had been particularly badly affected. In addition to losing a McDonalds (!), the HMV store was gone, as well as many smaller retailers that could no longer afford to operate. When I saw the town with my own eyes, it was clear that the area had taken a hit, and sadly wasn't showing any sign of turning that around.

Still, despite all that, I still had a lot of positive things to enjoy.

Notably; the food!

On my very first day back in the country, I found myself very quickly getting a fair amount of admin in order. First off was heading to 02, and getting my UK iPhone converted from a monthly contract service to a pay-as-you-go account. My contract had still been in effect during my last visit home, and I'd kept it going until the end of the contract (since the cancellation fee was roughly equivalent to keeping the contract going until its natural end). Now, of course, it had expired, so I immediately found myself trying to get that sorted out. After months of pointless back and forward with the 02 online help service (where they had sent me the wrong SIM, not responded to my e-mails or simply just shown a fair amount of incompetence), the worker in the Kirkcaldy store instantly sorted out my request within around three minutes. Just goes to show you there's no real equivalent for face-to-face interaction.

That same day, my father had a burning desire to take me to the hospital, for some odd reason. I had no idea why until we arrived, and I discovered that he wanted to buy me a coffee at the huge new Costa coffee shop which had opened up inside (as an aside, the newly extended Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy certainly looks impressive, and I'm quite proud to have those facilities in my local town). We spent a fair bit of time just catching up, and I felt very content just to be home and spending time with my father.

Equally, my mother and I visited the Rejects store in St. Clair street, which always has a wealth of Christmas decorations for sale at this time of year. It's all very tacky, but that's part of the fun, and we took several photographs of our favourites. As always, we also made our way to the coffee shop on one of the upper floors (this is a recurring theme with my family; in case you haven't noticed, even in Japan, we quite enjoy visiting coffee shops).

Naturally, there was plenty of socialising to be done. I had lunch with Stuart (my best friend from high school), and popped in to see Alice (of Map & Key fame) at her work in Waterstones (complete with Santa-hat).

Lunch with Stuart.

Irn Bru. Made from girders.

There were constant pub visits and social engagements, just like last year, and I managed to see a few faces that I didn't mange to the year before. Of course, I also made my way into my old university town of Stirling to catch up with fellow film-maker (and photographer-extraordinaire) Mirek Csubaszek, as well as spending time with Lawrie Brewster and Jon Finnegan, who I'd worked with a lot on various film projects before leaving to come to Japan (and who offered me a sneak preview of an early cut of the Lawrie's new film Lord of Tears).

Another new tradition was with Adam Durcatz, a fellow ALT who travelled home for Christmas to Edinburgh. We had met the previous year in Edinburgh for dinner and whisky, and we continued this year, with drinks and political discussion aplenty. I really enjoy our time together, so it's bizarre that I've seen him more times in Scotland now than I have in Japan!

Back in Edinburgh.

Haggis fritters.

Without a car, I was heavily dependent upon lifts from my parents and public transport to get around, and I must admit I found it fairly restrictive. Getting back from Stirling in particular was a nightmare, with a bus journey to Dunfermline which took over an hour (and required a bonus lift from my parents). It must be said that public transport in Scotland is simply not up to the standards of Japan.

I also made a point of getting myself to a couple of local sports matches this year, which I had neglected to do during my last visit. Popping along to a game of my local football team Raith Rovers with Neil Ingebrigsten (against long-time rivals Cowdenbeath) was gratifying, even if the result wasn't in our favour (we lost). I also made my way to the Fife Flyers, our local ice hockey time, but sadly they were equally beaten by the Braehead Clan. Oh dear. At least I got to spend time with Ross Cunningham, my old uni flat-mate and now the official videographer of the Fife Flyers club (as the producer of Fife Flyers TV).

Fish and chips after the football.
Neil and I enjoyed these while watching the (frankly bizarre) film 'Iron Sky'.

Fun at the Flyers.

Other excitement involved a trip through to the German Christmas market in Edinburgh with Stephanie Scade. This market is one of the highlights of the Christmas season in Edinburgh, although they're of course fairly common around most city centres at Christmas (I mean, I even found one in Osaka). I think the one in Edinburgh is especially fitting, though, as the atmosphere of the city is already very old-worldly with it's Georgian architecture and cobbled streets. Steph and I spent a lazy afternoon drinking Glühwein and eating chocolate and cream waffles. Year on year, it always feels very "Christmassy".

We also popped into the huge Jenners department store to see their huge X-Mas tree, which year on year never fails to impress as it reaches up through several floors of the store.

Jenners Department Store.

An amazing Christmas tree. This photo really doesn't do the scale justice.

Christmas Eve lead to the traditional high school reunions in Wetherspoons in the Kirkcaldy High Street. Always a blast. This year I made the slightly unfortunate mistake of breaking my friend Tara's camera by accidentally dropping it. Whoops. Otherwise, it was a great night catching up with friends.

Reunions and soft-focus.

Iain gets a little too excited.

This was also followed by a very pleasant end to the evening at my friend Kitty's flat, where she'd baked a host of cupcakes for a few guests. We stayed up until the early hours debating international politics (mostly centred around China). A fine way to round off the festivities. Kitty also gave me a lovely Christmas present: my very own Nessie toy!

Cake time.

Christmas Day followed the usual family traditions; presents in the morning, a big dinner in the evening, and scratchcards and board-games. Tragedy struck, however, when it was discovered early in the day that our turkey for Christmas dinner had gone off in the fridge. Disaster! Not being safe to eat, it had to go into the bin, which was a terrible waste. For the first time ever, the centre-piece of Christmas dinner was a ham joint. By no means the end of the world, but it was still a little disappointing.

Traditional Christmas.

Christmas was still a lot of fun, though. The day was saved just by spending time with family and receiving some lovely and thoughtful presents from my loved ones (and, in better news, we got a free replacement turkey from the supermarket the very next day).

Andy Mitchell and I continued our new Boxing Day tradition of heading to the cinema, this time to see The Hobbit in 3D. It was... well, disappointing would be the best way to describe it. I'm a fan of the book, and this really isn't the best place to talk about why I thought it was such a flop. Nice to see Sylvester McCoy (one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who actors) in a big release, though. That 48-fps nonsense looks mince, though. Absolutely unbearable, and Peter Jackson's off his head if he thinks that's the future of cinema.

Post-movie analysis with Andy Mitchell.

Hogmanay this year was full of highlights.

I made my way to Glasgow, where I reunited with fellow Kagawa ALT Richard Kinsella (who I hadn't seen since July), around five months since he'd left Japan and returned to Scotland. The two of us got together at a cafe in the East End named Ubiquitous Chip (which showed up in a list of BA's top five places to eat on my in-flight magazine).

Former ALT Richard Kinsella.


An Aberdeen Angus steak for lunch.

This lunch would be taking the form of dinner for me, too, so we decided to go all out for it. We ordered some pretty fantastic lunches between us, as well as indulging in dessert. I ordered an Aberdeen Angus steak, though I have to be honest and say it didn't hold a candle to the Kobe beef steak I'd had around a month earlier. The two of us chatted at length for some time about his experiences after JET; what it was like settling back home and his new working life. It was a great insight into what to expect when I finally did the same thing myself. It also felt great to have a connection between both worlds; feeling connected via a natural bridge between both Japan and Scotland.

I also managed to squeeze in a wee coffee with my pal Meesh (and her boyfriend Ross), though we were both short for time as we were rushing off to different parties in Glasgow. Meesh had bought me a box of shortbread as a Christmas present, but tragically I forgot to pick it up with me when I left the coffee shop. Whoops. Sorry, Meesh! She was still happy, though, because I gave her three bottles of a peculiar Japanese grape juice she likes named Fute Fute Jelly (it has a strange "jelly" texture which I can't say I'm a fan of).

Subway travels.

A peculiar moment occurred when, as we were taking the Glasgow Underground subway (known as the "Clockwork Orange"), I stumbled upon another JET who was home for Christmas; Mikaly Papamichail. I guess it really is a small world. He seemed to be doing well, though there wasn't much time for chatting as we all very shortly found ourselves going our separate ways.

Small world.

This year's Hogmanay party took place at Stirling Uni legend Greg Christensen's flat in Glasgow. Greg had since begun working for the Daily Express newspaper (poor guy), and had moved into a flat in Glasgow with fellow Stirling Uni alumni Andy Heron. I was the first to arrive out of all the troops, but before long the flat was filled with old and familiar faces from my days at Stirling University (as well as two additional South African visitors to Scotland who were with rugby player Ross Doneghan).

Hogmanay Party.

Ring of Fire. Deadly.

We enjoyed drinks right up until midnight and the bells for New Year's. Greg's flat offered a sensational view of the fireworks over the city, and we saw several flaming paper lanterns being lit and drifting gently into the sky to welcome in the new year. This was followed by a night out in town, where - as you can imagine - drinks were enjoyed by all.

Admittedly, the next day we were all feeling rather worse for wear, as demonstrated here by my filmmaking buddy Skippy. Such are the perils of New Year merriment.

Andy Heron confuses coffee grains for instant coffee.

In the last few days before my departure, I also finally had an opportunity to complete the principal filming for a two year old short film I'd worked on! Originally started in 2011 and written by my friend Andy Mitchell, the filming for Random Text was put on indefinite hold when I went to Japan as the lead actor became unavailable and we were unable to finish in time before I left for Japan. It felt great to finally finish getting all of the shots we needed. You can read all about my adventures filming that particular project in this blog post on my film blog here. Big props to Lewis Wake, Stephanie Scade and Hazel Macdonald who helped out on the day!

I also had a chance to get together with a few of my other filmmaking friends from university to record an audio commentary of sorts for my short film Fatal Attractions. Here's the link.

Relaxing with Graham, Bryan and Steven.

Two nights before I had to head back to Japan, a few of my friends got together at the Styx bar and nightclub in Kirkcaldy for a final night out. I was finally able to reunite with my university flat-mate Michael Wilson, and we played several rounds of pool with (again) drinks. The evening then made it's way to the local 80's bar Blue Mondays, which was certainly an interesting venue. We were the youngest people there! Aside from a few drunken clientele who were being a tad obnoxious, we had a damn good time.

Pool shenanigans.

A Scottish Raith Rovers flag. Pretty exceptional.

Banter in Blue Mondays with Craig, Neil and Kitty.

On my final day in Scotland, naturally most of it was spent packing (as always). I was fortunate enough that the new laptop I had ordered during my time at home (a MacBook Pro) arrived the day before, only just in time for my departure back to Japan! My family treated me to a farewell dinner at the gorgeous Balbirnie Hotel, and discussed their plans to come out and see me in Japan again in April 2013. The evening definitely had an air of finality about it, but the company was warm and it solidified my feeling that I would always have a place to call home.

Farewell dinner.

The day of my return to Japan came before I know it, and there were several people who I still hadn't seen even after two visits. Once again I got on the plane at Edinburgh Airport, waving goodbye to my family yet again, but feeling far more confident that I'd done before. I knew I would be seeing my family again soon.

Farewells at the airport.

Winter in Kagawa, Japan

I thought I should talk about Winter in Japan; or rather, really just the the climate! As I come from Scotland, which typically has a reputation for being rather cold (which it is!), many people suspect that Japan would probably have a warmer climate, and that Winter in this country would be a milder and less chilly season. While Takamatsu doesn't get much snow at all (so no seasonal snowscapes or skiing, sadly!), and so one would be forgiven for thinking that the cold seasons here would have been considerably less cold than what I was used to.

I'm afraid to say that this is definitely not the case. This Winter has been, perhaps, the coldest I have ever experienced.

A familiar sight in homes across Japan; the lack of insulation

means the heat from an air-con becomes a room's only warmth.

 

My air-con remote turned up to 30°C.

Standard setting for me.

You'll remember that I've previously commented on the extreme heat in Summer-time. When I first arrived in Japan, the most immediately striking thing (other than the language shift and the cultural differences) was the vast temperature difference. While Scotland usually sees a bit of sunshine and a few barbecues, Japan overwhelmed me with the brutal heat that caused me to sweat like I'd never done so before in my life. It was just a tad overbearing... yet it seemed to promise that perhaps this would be a year-round trend; generally warmer temperatures and perhaps a comfortable Winter. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The pleasantly cooler climate of November was merely a deception; December, January and February in Japan are cold.

So, what's the problem?

As I understand it, Japanese buildings are consistently lacking in insulation. The reason for this was described to me as a fear that heavily insulated buildings would amplify the heat in Summer, and therefore the solution was just to bear with the cool Winters as they were. I don't know how legitimate this is, but it's certainly the most common and logical explanation I've been offered on the subject.

This sounds reasonable enough in theory, but in practice it means that waking up every morning can be a gruelling experience - leaving the comfort of the duvet causes a system shock and shivers to shoot through me every single morning. From my point of view, the lack of central heating in most buildings seems the most unforgivable; a standard feature of many Western homes, only a few buildings in Japan benefit from this seemingly commonplace solution adopted by the rest of the world. If you were expecting the school classrooms might have this feature, well, I'm afraid around 95% that I've experienced don't.

  

The only solution that is usually offered within the home is the common air-con system on which I was so dependant in the Summer months. In Winter, the needs are inverted, and so the air-con system is designed to allow the flow of hot air, too, and to generate heat in a confined area. This does wonders to warm the living room area, but does absolutely nothing to heat the corridor or bathroom areas, which are outside of my solitary air-con's range and remain chilled every morning and night. The condensation on the inside of my front door and fridge every morning is actually wet to the touch; an image that pretty much sums up the situation for me.

It's actually reached the point where now, everyday, I wake up ten minutes before my standard alarm time, turn on the air-con for heating, and wait ten minutes for the living room to warm up. Then, it's a gruelling psychological battle to open the door through to the hallway and sprint in my dressing gown and slippers - whilst freezing! - into the bathroom for the morning shower. Furthermore, work days have become dominated by an excessive need to drink tea, coffee and ocha, for fear of freezing without the consistent intake of hot fluids.

It staggers me that Japan operates every year with this same damn problem.

There is one shining beacon of light in this rather miserable situation, however; Heat-Tech!

 Heat-Tech from Uni Qlo!

 

Heat-Tech shirts and socks; essential for surviving

the cold at Winter - both outdoors and in!

Not to offer too much of a plug, but Heat-Tech (appropriately labelled as 'Japan Technology') is sold at Uni Qlo stores around the country. Basically, these clothes are fairly skin-tight vests (both long and short-sleeve), leg-warmers, underwear and socks that are designed to retain heat and fit comfortably underneath your regular clothing. I have seen a few other versions of the same style of clothing available from other retailers, but I decided to place my faith in this brand.

Thus far, it has helped considerably. Every day, almost without exception, I wear these clothes under my work clothes to school - in addition to a jumper and a heavy wooly coat, scarf and clothes (and occasionally a beanie hat). Usually, around four to five layers (and a double-pair of socks). It's still cold, yes, but it's made the Winter season just that little bit more bearable, and for that reason I heartily recommend these items to anyone either visiting or living in Japan at Winter. Many of my friends recently wenk to visit the famous annual Snow Festival (Yuki-matsuri) in Hokkaido, supposedly the coldest part of Japan. All I can say is that I hope they brought plenty of Heat-Tech along!

The climate has recently began to show steady signs of warming up again, recently; temperatures are chilly but not quite so brutal, and I can get away with wearing slightly less layers to work everyday. It's still cold, but at least I can feel a tad more comfortable on my early morning sprints to the shower.

Of course, once the Summer comes back, I certainly won't have to worry about being cold anymore. Undoubtedly, though, I'll be spending just as much time complaining about the heat!