Paid in Kindness

My husband is a doctor, and some old fashioned ways still abound here in Japan, despite best democratic efforts to stamp them out. Although everyone has to pay for their health care here, and of course the hospital pays Yasu a salary; especially older people here still feel they have not done the right thing unless they give the doctor a thank you gift when they leave the hospital.
This can take the form of money and tokens, which of course they are now bound by hospital policy to refuse, but sometimes they bring food or other actual gifts as well. This no doubt goes back to the days when there was no national health insurance and people had to pay for their health care however they could, but it has become such an ingrained part of Japanese culture that all efforts by the hospitals are not enough to convince some people that they shouldn't do it.
It provides Y with a lot of difficult moments trying to refuse all manner of things, and sometimes he just ends up having to accept to avoid offending them. Of course he provides the same level of care to all his patients!
I always feel slightly uncomfortable, but I do also get why he can't say no. And once I have dealt with the guilt, I have to say you do get some nice surprises. One of his patients is a butcher and always sends us a great load of top quality shabu shabu meat at winter gift season, we get the odd case of beer, and today we got these amazing home grown summer veg.
It always makes me feel like I'm in a chapter of Little House on the Prairie, and while it is not all expected or taken for granted, the feelings behind the gesture are always greatly appreciated.
Thank you, people whoe names I can't say, we wish you the best of health in the future!

Now, what to make......