Sitting down in the empty seat next to Junko on the ferry prompted her to smile and rummage through the depths of her square-bottomed bag. Like pulling a rabbit out of a hat — tadaa! — she suddenly produced a bento lunch. “Here,” she said, plopping it onto my lap. “Have a nice lunch today.”

“I’m a typical Japanese old lady. We always carry something in our bags to give someone,” she said, linking together for me a series of what I’d thought were isolated incidents in my past: the handmade temari (Japanese toy) I received from an old lady on a public bus once, an amulet a child at a train station gave me while cradled in the arms of her grandmother, and dozens of instances of food being pushed my way when coming home on the ferry with other islanders.

I’ve received an untold number of things from older ladies over the years — all of them, it turns out, members of a well-established Old Lady Kindness Brigade!