Community in Action

If you travel to and, most importantly, live in other countries you will encounter many traditions that you appreciate more than those in your country. In most cases it’s very easy to transplant those traditions to your own home. For example, the idea of never wearing outside shoes in the house was something that I first experienced in Japan. When we got back to the UK we simply introduced that in our house. A few people complained but most shrugged their shoulders, removed their shoes and just thought we were strange 😂. However there was one tradition that was impossible to transfer as it requires the buy in of the whole of society.

From nursery school onwards, Japanese children are to be found clearing up their schools at the end of every day. This is not to save money on employing cleaners, although it obviously has this result, it is to teach them respect for their surroundings, their environment and each other. Every so often the Internet is full of pictures of Japanese fans clearing up their areas of a stadium or their players leaving their dressing rooms spotless. I don’t often share these because it’s not strange behaviour to me. The Japanese wouldn’t dream of leaving someone else to clear up their mess. I look around the UK and see the complete opposite everywhere I go. Every street, every building, every school, every park, full of rubbish left by thoughtless people with no respect for anyone or anything around them because they weren’t taught to have this respect at a very early age. Japan is a country that has a number of traditions I appreciated and some I didn’t, but if people in the UK could somehow have a complete culture change and actually respect their surroundings enough to clear up after themselves I would be all for it.