Yeah, just go ahead and ignore the Honda engineers.  What do they know.

As for the type of oil, etc.--hey, you're leasing the car.  You're going
to spend thousands more on extra maintenance, pricey supplies, and no
doubt expensive waxes and polishes?  For a leased vehicle you're going
to turn in in 3 years?

In theory the maintenance minder is calibrated for SM level conventional
oil.   You will probably see it tell you to change the oil somewhere
between 4-8k miles depending on your driving conditions.

If you want to have a little extra safety margin then you could go with
the maintenance minder's indication of when to change and then use
synthetic oil.

On my '06 Acura I did the first change at 50% indicated remaining oil
life and used conventional oil.  Likewise I changed again at about 50%
indicated remaining oil life using a good synthetic oil.  Going forward
I plan to use synthetic and change when it gets down to 10% indicated
remaining oil life.  In my use it looks like this will happen at around
7k miles per oil change.  I figure that if Honda's engineering team says
a dino oil should still be good at that point then I have plenty of
margin with a synthetic.

The only modern Honda which requires synthetic oil is the new
turbocharged Acura RDX.  Even so, I do my own oil changes and am willing
to spend a few extra dollars per oil change for synthetic oil for the
extra margin of protection.  Doing so increases my costs about
$20-$30/year compared to conventional oil.  Sometimes I do even better
than that by working the available deals.

John