I appreciate it y’all! I’m chalking a lot of this up to wabi sabi (perhaps too much) but the handle being “stained” is what’s really getting my goat. Regardless of whether it was a retailer or mazaki’s defect, I feel some type of way that the defect wasn’t outright disclosed prior to purchase considering I had a working correspondence with them. I feel as though a defect of any kind, especially on a knife of this price point, warrants a conversation at the least, if not a price break. This particular defect isn’t an easy fix either considering the tang on these is abnormally large. Am I in the wrong for feeing this way? Apologies if I’m hijacking this thread