So, does the world really treat you better with a Richard Mille on your wrist? In a word, yes. I never thought that a timepiece could create so many moments of spontaneous amusement and friendship, but it has. One such moment was when I was seated at Sushiso Masa, a cult Edo-style sushi restaurant in the Nishi-Azabu district in Tokyo. As my guest and I were the first to arrive, we had ample opportunity to notice the conspicuous wealth indicators of the remaining two couples who arrived, including two crocodile Hermès bags and an impressive amount of Van Cleef & Arpels high jewelry on the ladies. One of the ladies was wearing a diamond-encrusted ladies’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, while the other was wearing a Chanel J12. But because of the way we were seated, the men’s wrists were obscured.

It was only when I was getting up to go to the men’s room that one of them suddenly remarked, “Wow, I like your watch.” As I turned toward the man closest to me, he smiled as he raised his wrist and revealed the RM 003 GMT tourbillon sitting proudly on it. Amazingly enough, the other man at the sushi counter also laughed and raised his wrist to reveal that he, too, was wearing a Richard Mille tourbillon. We were soon congratulating each other on the fact that we’d all chosen the stealthy titanium-cased versions. Suffice it to say, the ice was not broken, but inexorably smashed: we were soon trading watches, pouring each other ludicrous amounts of sake, laughing as if we were long-lost friends and getting similarly smashed. What was even more incredible about this was that I’d always perceived the Japanese to be reserved and slightly standoffish. When I asked one of the men about this, he grinned and said, “This is what is nice about the Richard Mille customer: he is always a cool guy. Like Richard.”