Postcard from Edinburgh - Tartan tat an' aw' that

Scotland's major export is, I'm now convinced, not tartan or tweed or scotch or oil or wry humour or racial stereotypes or shortbread or aggression or red hair or even tourists that go from blue to red to flaming balls of flaking skin in the Mediterranean sunshine. No, based on the evidence of my recent stay in Edinburgh, Scotland's main export is happy Japanese people.

There are a hell of a lot of Japanese people in Edinburgh and most of them seem to be coming out of tartan tat shops with carrier bags so laden with tartan and shortbread you think they are going to need a fleet of wheelbarrows to get all that shit back to the hotel.

Every time you walk past an Edinburgh tat shop, (which is every second shop on the Royal Mile) there is a happy family of Japanese tourists exiting, laden with bags brimming with tartan products. All I can think is that there must be a hell of a lot of obscure clans; the MacFuji's, the MacKunioshi's and the MacHiroshogi's must be delighted to discover their family tartan exists here in Edinburgh, at such reasonable prices! God alone knows what downtown Tokyo looks like when everyone decides to wear the gear they bought on holiday, Seven Samurai meets Braveheart.

Not that I was immune to the charms of tartan tat (tatan?) myself. I now own the most expensive shortbread in the world, not because it is made from organic panda harvested at the full moon by Madonna but rather because I loaded up on so many ‘memories of Scotland’ (ironic given that the most famous Scottish export is responsible for memory lapses when enjoyed in quantity) that on the flight* home I had to pay excess baggage. It may have been the flags or the tee shirt or the bottle of booze (oops) but I know, just KNOW, it was the shortbread. Or the Jimmy wig.

*That’s right, I took a domestic flight. Carbon footprint like a clown me.