Rarely before in recent years has Japan gone so much out of its way to welcome a foreign leader as it did when receiving India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi (or NaMo to his fans), who started his tour from Kyoto.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe not only broke protocol by receiving Modi in Kyoto on Saturday but also spent the weekend with him in the old imperial capital, holding a tête-à-tête with his guest and praying with him at the 1,200-year-old Buddhist temple of Toji, a world heritage site.

The NaMo-Shinzo show actually took off with a big bear hug, illustrating how close personal bonds between two government heads can help add greater momentum to a bilateral relationship. Modi deliberately made Japan his first foreign port of call beyond the Indian subcontinent so as to spotlight that country's centrality to Indian interests.