Please tell me about Scotland!

by Ami K.
(Suginami, Tokyo, Japan)

Scotland?? ...Actually I didn't know about Scotland at all. I had only heard the name of the country. Although I knew Scotland was located somewhere in Europe, I was not sure of the accurate place.

I haven't seen any articles related to Scotland in the newspaper. So Scotland was a country that I didn't need to think about carefully.

Scotland was merely Scotland for me! That's all! I thought.

But I made use of this opportunity, and I considered this country again. First I consulted a world map and searched the word "Scotland." But somehow, I can't confirm the location! There's no word of "Scotland." Why??

Next I went to a few webpages linked to Scotland. Finally I found the place of Scotland. In the northern part of Great Britain and a number of small islands is Scotland!

In addition to the place, I understood why I couldn't find "Scotland" on the map. Because some maps describe "Scotland" as the "United Kingdom." So I realized that there must be politically complicated problems in this area. (this may be beside the point, because there are a lot of kind of maps in the world! The map I saw this time is made in India. Surprisingly, this map expresses fully the Northern Territories, which are controversial areas between Japan & Russia, as a Russian possession! I can't believe!)

Is Scotland an independent country now?? If it isn't an independent country, why does it have the capital city "Edinburgh"??

A lot of questions occur in my mind!!! I became interested in Scotland, and furthermore I wanna know a lot about this area! What is the problem??

If you have any knowledge about this area, please tell me. :-)