The Japanese know how to receive a gift.

Back when I was fishing in Alaska we sold our roe herring to the Japanese. The Japanese fish buyer was damned good to us and after we sold him our catch he both bought us lunch and schlepped us a nice little wad of a couple hundred bucks apiece because he knew we took care of our catch.

Over lunch the skipper asked me for the time and I told him it was 1345. The Japanese asked me if my watch was on a 24 hour mode. It was.

He commented that in the summer he had problems knowing if it was day or night. He was not the Lone Ranger by any stretch of the imagination. I wore a Casio in 24 hour mode just for this reason.

I think I paid about $20 for it at the time.

Anyway, I went out and bought him one and set it for 24 hour mode and hacked it on WWV to the proper time and wandered over to his office.

When he saw me in the doorway he called me in and I handed the watch to him. He opened it up and his face lit up like a Christmas tree.

He pulled off the $2500 (in the mid 1980s!) Alaska gold and jade watch off of his wrist, dropped it in the trash can and strapped my $20 Casio on while thanking me!

While I'm damned good and sure he later fished the Alaska watch out of the trash, I never saw him wearing anything else while he was on the island. I believe he stayed on in Kodiak until very late August or early in September. He had more to do after roe herring season.

THAT's how you accept a gift!

I ran into him several times later and in June he told me he had been sleeping with his watch on so that when he woke up he would know if he had actually slept all night or had just dozed off and caught a nap.

I laughed and told him I did the same thing because it IS sometimes confusing when there's 23 hours of daylight in the summer.


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY