Shortly after arriving for dinner with the Japanese prime minister on Sunday, Tony Abbott decided he should present his host with a gift.
Mr Abbott had accepted a rare invitation to dine privately with Shinzo Abe, a casual BBQ and sake affair outside the formalities of bilateral meetings.
Japan's leader is not known for making such arrangements lightly, and the timing was auspicious.
Negotiators had just hammered out a free trade agreement between Australia and Japan, ending seven years of stalemate and bringing the two countries closer than ever.
But the experience had been gruelling for all involved. Though the deal had already been brokered by their respective parties, there was a sense some matters needed to be discussed by the men in charge.
And so it was that Mr Abbott found himself alongside Mr Abe on a balcony, feeding large koi swimming in a pond.
Both leaders agreed the deal - while overall a positive step - came with a measure of political pain.
No trade deal comes without a trade off.
Mr Abbott had agreed to dump all tariffs on Japanese cars and components within three years, foregoing millions in future government revenue.
Mr Abe had resisted pressure from powerful Japanese farming groups and reduced tariffs on beef - an extremely sensitive sector - and other agricultural exports.
They agreed there was work to be done, and instructed their trade officials to iron out the last-minute kinks in the morning before the deal was made public.
With the business out of the way, it was time to relax with Japanese beers, some traditional sake and local cuisine.
The mood was reportedly warm and convivial, the tone set perhaps by a sentimental gift offered by Mr Abbott to his host earlier that evening.
Mr Abbott had sourced archived photographs of Mr Abe's grandfather, a former prime minister during his visit to Australia in 1957 when a landmark treaty was signed with Sir Robert Menzies.
The historical parallels have not been lost on Mr Abbott.
In fact the sense of symbolism between this FTA and the treaty forged by Menzies and Abe's forebear Nobusuke Kishi many years ago has been a running theme raised by Mr Abbott throughout this trip.
Leafing slowly through the photographs, including one of his grandfather alongside a kangaroo, Mr Abe remarked that the images would mean a lot to his mother.
Mr Abe's wife was also presented with a scarf by acclaimed Australian-Japanese designer Akira Isogawa.
In the bilateral spirit, Mr Abe reciprocated with a gift certain to win him future favours in Canberra - a set of state of the art, high-end electronic bike gears, manufactured by the Japanese cycling company Shimano.
