So having spent some time in the Australian Army and some time in the Royal Australian Air Force, I have over the years spent some time in foreign lands working with military people from several other countries, which is awesome. My last overseas trip was a couple of years ago working with the USAF and the Japanese Air Force in Guam and one or two of the north Mariana islands for an exercise. A mate of mine in the RAAF is a Japanese bloke, we’ll call him Yuki. Anyway Yuki is a mechanic, but has secondary duties as a linguist. He was on this trip in his role as an interpreter. We were walking out of the base exchange and some Japanese officers were walking past us. I said, in my stupid Aussie accent, ‘konichiwa mate’ And the jap officers stopped and looked at me confused. Yuki piped up in the jap lingo and they had a good ol’ chat. When they finished talking, the jap officers all bowed at me. Yuki laughed his arse off as they walked away. I asked him ‘what the fuck did you say to those guys?’ Turns out he told them I was the chief of Air Force! I was a Leading Aircraftman. One chevron, I think the equivalent of what the yanks call an E4.