Latest / What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast / S01E16: Japan, Part 1 of 2: The Country That Quietly Won the Engineering War (Seiko, Grand Seiko, Citizen and Casio)

Transcript

S01E16: Japan, Part 1 of 2: The Country That Quietly Won the Engineering War (Seiko, Grand Seiko, Citizen and Casio) · What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast

• 0:00
  The year is 1967, the place is Nushkatel, Switzerland.
• 0:04
  The occasion is the Nushkatel Observatory Chronometer
• 0:08
  competition, the most prestigious timing competition
• 0:11
  or the contest in the watch world and running basically
• 0:14
  since the mid 1800s. Every year the finest
• 0:17
  watchmakers in Switzerland, Omega Long, Jean, Gerard,
• 0:21
  Perrigo, Zenith. They send their best movements
• 0:24
  to be tested and then measured against one another ranked.
• 0:28
  Their best movements will come in obviously 1st 1964 Seiko
• 0:32
  entered for the first time and their best movement finished
• 0:36
  144th. 144th, not so great. Then a year later, 1965, their
• 0:43
  best movement finished 114th. Hey, we're moving in the right
• 0:47
  direction, but it's not good enough for our brothers over in
• 0:50
  Japan. 1966, just a year later, from 114th, 9th, I think you see
• 0:57
  the trend here. And in 1967, a movement from
• 1:01
  Seikos, a factory in Tokyo, finished fourth, the highest
• 1:05
  placed mechanical wristwatch movement in the entire
• 1:08
  competition. The movement rankings, the
• 1:10
  manufacturers, all the manufacturers, all the
• 1:13
  countries. Seiko finished second.
• 1:15
  The year after that, Seiko entered the Geneva Observatory
• 1:18
  competition and their movements swept positions four through 10
• 1:24
  in the mechanical wristwatch category.
• 1:25
  Seiko was first because their top three positions went to
• 1:29
  Swiss quartz movements, and Seiko's mechanical watches were
• 1:33
  the most precise mechanical watches in the world.
• 1:36
  Did you catch that? The reason that the Swiss ones
• 1:38
  won is because they had submitted quartz and Seiko only
• 1:42
  lost out to the quartz movement. Seiko's mechanical watches were
• 1:46
  again the most precise mechanical watches in the world.
• 1:49
  And then in 1968, the Geneva Observatory Tory, they cancelled
• 1:53
  the wristwatch competition altogether.
• 1:55
  We don't want you guys to play anymore.
• 1:56
  And in 1972, this Swiss watch industry, these executives went
• 2:02
  to see the Canton of Mooshkatel's industry minister.
• 2:06
  They demanded the trials be ended, the minister reported.
• 2:10
  Apparently, they told them the point of the competition was for
• 2:14
  the best to win. The Swiss threatened to boycott
• 2:19
  Neuschkatel. Trials were suspended.
• 2:21
  And guess what? They were never revived.
• 2:23
  And when the competition was finally restarted, you know,
• 2:26
  decades later, the new rules required that all movement parts
• 2:29
  be made in Europe. Switzerland won the marketing
• 2:36
  war, but Japan won the engineering war.
• 2:39
  So today we're going to talk about why that might matter
• 2:43
  more. Look where the cedar leans.
• 3:02
  The layers keep turning slow. Small rooms, sharp hands, one
• 3:09
  loop 1 steady. Welcome back to What's on Your
• 3:12
  Rest Day? I'm Wachovsky.
• 3:14
  We've been through a run through Non Swiss Watch world for a
• 3:19
  couple of episodes now. We went to Tool watches, we went
• 3:22
  to American watchmakers. We were in Germany even for a
• 3:26
  little bit today. We're going to go somewhere that
• 3:28
  we should have been in this conversation much earlier, and
• 3:31
  I'll take the blame for that. I get so excited about brands
• 3:34
  and sometimes I have other ones that I just assume everybody is
• 3:37
  sort of on board with. And you know, then I, I realized
• 3:39
  that maybe we're not. So this is kind of a two-part
• 3:42
  episode. Part 1 today is I'm going to
• 3:44
  call these guys the heavy hitters, the brands that most
• 3:46
  western enthusiasts are somewhat aware of, but probably don't
• 3:50
  maybe not fully understand. And then Part 2 is the next
• 3:53
  episode where to get into the Japanese Indies because again,
• 3:56
  this is a niche show and you can't get much more niche than
• 3:59
  super niche. So the Japanese Indies is we're
• 4:01
  going to go after that. Now the makers of what I would
• 4:04
  say is almost nobody outside the hobby knows about who are doing
• 4:08
  work that rival the best work in Geneva, Lilac and so on.
• 4:12
  So settle in, we're going to go East this time.
• 4:15
  Segment 1, the thesis, Japan and the engineering war.
• 4:19
  Now, before I get into this, I want to say hello and what's up
• 4:22
  to the listeners out in Japan? I, I saw my data and, and some
• 4:28
  of the analytics that are coming back from this podcast.
• 4:30
  And again, now we're on multiple platforms.
• 4:32
  We're on Spotify, we're on Amazon, we're on YouTube, we're
• 4:36
  on what were the other ones? iHeartRadio, a couple of other
• 4:40
  ones. So I'm just, I'm just really on
• 4:42
  Apple podcast. And so I'm just really excited.
• 4:44
  And whatever platform you're listening to, thank you for
• 4:47
  doing that. And then also thank you for
• 4:48
  giving it a thumbs up or liking it or sharing it.
• 4:50
  And then also thank you for subscribing.
• 4:52
  That actually means a lot when you get those notifications that
• 4:54
  the the podcast is, you know, there's a new episode or
• 4:58
  whatever. Give me a heads up.
• 4:59
  I just, I really appreciate it and thanks for the feedback too.
• 5:01
  So let's get into Japan. And again, brothers and sisters
• 5:03
  out in Japan. I'm just saying hello from
• 5:05
  Southern California. So again, before I get into the
• 5:08
  brands, I want to establish this argument because I think this is
• 5:11
  an episode with a real thesis, or at least I think it is in my
• 5:14
  head. The watch world runs on a
• 5:16
  particular story and it goes kind of something like this.
• 5:19
  Switzerland is where watchmaking was affected.
• 5:22
  Switzerland is the land of hot horology.
• 5:24
  Switzerland is the place where serious watches are going to
• 5:28
  come from. Japan makes affordable,
• 5:30
  reliable, competent watches. But they're just, you know, a
• 5:34
  category below Switzerland. Can you catch the sarcasm in my
• 5:37
  voice here? You know, they're a useful
• 5:39
  alternative for people who can't afford the Swiss standard.
• 5:42
  And that story is at best incomplete.
• 5:45
  At worst, it's the version of history that people who control
• 5:49
  watchmaking's marketing budget choose to tell.
• 5:52
  And sometimes they have the biggest megaphone.
• 5:54
  And then some people on Reddit believe it.
• 5:56
  Here's the other version. Japan has over the past 60 years
• 5:59
  matched or exceeded Switzerland in virtually every single
• 6:02
  measure, every single objective measure of watchmaking Precision
• 6:06
  in house, movement development, material science, surface
• 6:10
  finishing, movement, architecture, volume, production
• 6:13
  quality at scale. And yet quietly, like in a room
• 6:16
  A2 room, you know, workshop in the mountains of Nagano, for
• 6:19
  example, Japan has produced something that completes our
• 6:23
  competes directly with Philippe Dufour and Protect Philippe for
• 6:27
  the title of the finest finishing in the world.
• 6:29
  And Japan did this with almost no coverage in the Western watch
• 6:33
  press until relatively recently with almost no boutique presence
• 6:37
  outside of Japan. Well, again, until recently,
• 6:39
  with almost no global marketing budget compared to the Swiss
• 6:42
  luxury groups, the Swiss won the marketing war.
• 6:45
  I completely I will give them that.
• 6:47
  But I think and I'm going to make the argument Japan has won
• 6:50
  the engineering war. And if you want to totally
• 6:52
  understand this hobby at full depth, I think we have to
• 6:55
  understand and appreciate what's going on in Japan.
• 6:57
  Segment 2 we're going to talk about Seiko, the foundation of
• 7:00
  really everything. So let's, let's start at the
• 7:02
  foundation Seiko Seiko, founded in 1881 by and I believe the the
• 7:07
  proper pronunciation of this. And I'm going to screw it up
• 7:09
  like I always do if I don't, if I don't offend at least someone
• 7:13
  in a country by butchering languages, I haven't done my job
• 7:16
  correctly. Quintaro Hattori, I hope that's
• 7:19
  right in Tokyo. He's 21 years old and he opened
• 7:21
  a clock and watch workshop and then he started manufacturing
• 7:25
  again, all these 20 year olds, right?
• 7:27
  The company grew steadily for like a century, became one of
• 7:30
  the largest watchmakers obviously in the world.
• 7:32
  And Seiko today is not just one company.
• 7:34
  It's this umbrella over several entities, some of which you
• 7:37
  probably recognize and some of you probably wouldn't recognize.
• 7:40
  Some of these and the Seiko Watch Corporation markets
• 7:43
  watches and specifically Seiko Epson, which is based in a
• 7:48
  smaller kind of subset of Nagano.
• 7:51
  We manufacture movements components, particularly the
• 7:53
  Spring Drive and Seiko Instruments handles mechanical
• 7:57
  watch assembly. The Seiko family includes Grand
• 8:00
  Seiko, Crador Prospects Passage and kind of the legacy King
• 8:04
  Seiko and Seiko 5 lines. And that's kind of a large and
• 8:07
  somewhat confusing ecosystem. And we're going to walk through
• 8:10
  kind of parts of that and when I think that it's going to kind of
• 8:13
  make sense. And what Seiko did, what their
• 8:16
  core contribution to watchmaking is, I think comes down to really
• 8:19
  two things. First, they democratize this
• 8:22
  precision, the Seiko 5 lineup, their affordable automatic
• 8:26
  watches at a very accessible price.
• 8:28
  They're sold globally. They, you know, they're still
• 8:31
  running reliably decades after manufacturer.
• 8:34
  And it's kind of one of the most important families, I think in
• 8:37
  watchmaking history. And they made mechanical watches
• 8:40
  available to people who would otherwise never have owned one.
• 8:43
  And that matters. It matters for the hobby and it
• 8:45
  matters for the craft. The SKX, for example, which is,
• 8:49
  you know, we've talked about this in the tool watch episode.
• 8:51
  It's the kind of the spiritual descendant of this tradition.
• 8:55
  Now second, they made some of the most technically ambitious
• 8:58
  movements in history on their own in house with no Swiss
• 9:02
  assistance. The high beat movements that won
• 9:05
  the observatory trials that quartz Astron, for example, the
• 9:08
  world's first quartz wristwatch in 1969, the spring drive like
• 9:12
  the nine SA 5, the high beat mechanical and even if you're
• 9:16
  going to go if you look at like the caliber 0100 through citizen
• 9:21
  they're again they're competitor and sometimes though they're
• 9:24
  collaborator. Japan built all of this now for
• 9:27
  listeners who want a single entry point to Seiko beyond the
• 9:31
  SKX, the Seiko passage line is I think where the brand's
• 9:35
  thoughtful approach to design and Japanese aesthetics.
• 9:38
  It really shows up at this very accessible price.
• 9:41
  Think like enamel dials and cocktail time dials, but also
• 9:45
  lacquer work. The Seiko 5 sports is kind of
• 9:48
  like every man's gateway and I think the prospects is, you
• 9:50
  know, we covered that in the tool watch episode.
• 9:52
  So but then get those are those are the gateway, the places, you
• 9:56
  know, where this episode I think is going to go much further.
• 9:59
  So let's get into segment 3. I call this the Grand Seiko
• 10:02
  section, the rebellion that became a legend in 1960, the
• 10:06
  Seikos Suwa factory. They made a decision.
• 10:09
  They would create a watch that did not compromise, a watch that
• 10:13
  met or exceeded the standard of accuracy, finishing reliability
• 10:17
  that could be applied to a wristwatch, and they called it
• 10:19
  Grand Seiko. The original Grand Seiko, a
• 10:22
  caliber 3180, debuted in 1960 with this set of international
• 10:27
  standards that they called the Grand Seiko standards.
• 10:30
  These were way more demanding than your cost certification
• 10:34
  requirements. They required greater accuracy
• 10:36
  across a wider temperature range, better reliability, a
• 10:40
  specific level of water resistance, a specific case
• 10:43
  finishing quality, and every single Grand Seiko had to be
• 10:46
  signed off internally before it could leave the factory.
• 10:49
  This wasn't like some luxury positioning move.
• 10:52
  It was an engineering manifesto. And again, you know that I like
• 10:55
  questions and I like answers. And the question that Grand
• 10:58
  Seiko and the folks in in at Seiko were asking were what can
• 11:01
  we do that's better? How can we make it better?
• 11:04
  And from 1960 to 1967, Seiko's two factories, the Suwa Nagano
• 11:09
  and the Danny in Tokyo, they developed the high beat
• 11:12
  movements. They were running at 36,000
• 11:14
  vibrations per hour and high beat movements are more accurate
• 11:18
  because they have a faster balance wheel, which is more
• 11:20
  resistant to these positional errors.
• 11:22
  And they submitted these movements.
• 11:24
  And again in Noush Katel and they went from 144th to 4th from
• 11:29
  1964 to 1967. And we told that story in kind
• 11:32
  of the open because I think it's significant.
• 11:35
  We came out of those observatories.
• 11:36
  And what came out of those observatories is this
• 11:39
  technological feedback back from this competition that went
• 11:41
  directly into Grand Seiko's movements.
• 11:43
  And then in the late 1970s, something remarkable happened.
• 11:47
  A young engineer at Seiko's SUA factory.
• 11:50
  If she, I think it's a Yo Yoshikazu and was his first
• 11:55
  name, and then I believe the last name is Akai Haine Akai
• 11:59
  Haine Yoshikazu Akai. And if my, my Japanese brothers
• 12:02
  and sisters are out there, correct me.
• 12:04
  He had an idea, though, This dude, he wanted to make a watch
• 12:07
  that was as precise as quartz, but powered entirely by a
• 12:11
  mainspring. So not a battery and not a solar
• 12:13
  cell, a mainspring that winded itself on the wearer's wrist.
• 12:17
  And we, we know what that is. We have watches with rotors and
• 12:20
  we under, we know exactly what that means.
• 12:21
  And so the inspiration for the mechanism came from this really
• 12:25
  unlikely place. He watched a bicycle that was
• 12:27
  descending a hill at constant speed, but it was using brakes
• 12:31
  and the braking principle applying force to this
• 12:34
  controlled rate of something powered by gravity.
• 12:37
  It gave him this idea kind of a light bulb or not.
• 12:39
  What if there was a tiny electromagnetic brake that
• 12:42
  control the rate of a glide wheel driven by a mainspring?
• 12:46
  And if that brake was governed by a quartz oscillator, the
• 12:51
  result would be a movement that generated its own power, but it
• 12:54
  kept quartz accuracy, and now you don't have any batteries and
• 12:57
  no compromises. And so this dude started working
• 13:00
  on this thing at 19, 77. And in 1982, his team had a
• 13:05
  working prototype. It ran for four hours, but that
• 13:07
  wasn't enough. The integrated circuit
• 13:09
  technology that would make it run longer hadn't been invented
• 13:13
  yet. And so the project got shelved.
• 13:15
  And in 1993, the circuit, the integrated circuit technology
• 13:19
  finally caught up to this idea. And then they restarted it
• 13:22
  again. So in 1997, they were given this
• 13:24
  this leadership over this entire watch division to put Spring
• 13:28
  Drive on kind of the front burner, as in we have the
• 13:31
  technology, it's caught up, let's restart this project.
• 13:33
  And so in 1998, Seiko presented a working Spring Dr. model at
• 13:38
  the Basel watch fair in the world and specifically the watch
• 13:42
  world started to pay attention. And then in 1998, at the age of
• 13:45
  52, before Spring Drive ever reached the market, he passed
• 13:50
  away. He didn't live to see it.
• 13:52
  The movement that he conceived in 1977 that he worked on for
• 13:56
  more than two decades. And finally, this opportunity
• 14:01
  that he wanted to see his work come to fruition, he never saw
• 14:04
  it on anyone's wrist. The first spring Dr. watches
• 14:07
  went on sale in Japan in December of 1999, fourteen
• 14:10
  months after his passing. The spring Dr. had a glide wheel
• 14:14
  instead of a balance and escapement, and the glide wheel
• 14:17
  rotates 8 times per second, powers a reference quartz
• 14:21
  oscillator and the oscillator's signal continuously applies a
• 14:25
  variable electromagnetic brake to the glide wheel to maintain
• 14:29
  contain this exact rate. And the result is gorgeous
• 14:33
  Result is the second hand that does not tick.
• 14:36
  It doesn't beat. It glides continuously, smoothly
• 14:41
  and completely silently. If you were to put this watch a
• 14:44
  spring drive on your time grapher, your time grapher would
• 14:47
  not read it because there is no TikTok.
• 14:50
  And this was in a way it was so smooth and so silent that in a
• 14:52
  way that it had this, there was like no purely mechanical watch
• 14:56
  that could replicate this. No mechanical escapement can
• 14:59
  release the seconds hand in a perfectly continuous motion in a
• 15:03
  perfectly continuous flow. Only spring Dr. does this.
• 15:06
  Now some watches can trick your eyes into making it look like
• 15:10
  it's gliding right. A 36,000 oscillations for
• 15:13
  example, and A and a high beat movement like what you'll find
• 15:16
  in a zenith for example, or even some of the Grand Seikos that
• 15:18
  hive high beat. If you're watching it with your
• 15:20
  eyes, it does look like it's moving.
• 15:22
  But if you record it or you put your phone on it and you put on
• 15:25
  slow motion, you will see it ticking.
• 15:27
  The Grand Seiko will not do that.
• 15:29
  It will glide. And so this accuracy, it was ±15
• 15:33
  seconds per month on these standard calibers and it was ±10
• 15:38
  seconds per month on the higher spec versions.
• 15:40
  And then you get ±1 second per day on the very finest of the
• 15:45
  Micro Artist Studios models. And this is, this is crazy.
• 15:49
  So the for context cost certifies a mechanical watch and
• 15:53
  they give it a certificate if it's within ±4 seconds per day.
• 15:58
  So standard Spring Drive is four times more accurate than a
• 16:01
  certified Swiss chronometer. In the first Grand Seiko Spring
• 16:04
  Drive, again, the caliber 9R65 automatic had a 72 hour power
• 16:08
  reserve and it launched in 2004. Think about how long it took for
• 16:12
  the rest of the industry to get catch up to even, you know, over
• 16:16
  50 hours of power reserve And they were already at 70 and that
• 16:18
  was 22,000 and four. And from there, Grand Seiko
• 16:21
  developed Spring Drive into one of the richest movement families
• 16:25
  in modern watchmaking. Now Spring Drive is only one
• 16:28
  part of the Grand Seiko story. The other other part are the
• 16:30
  dials. Grand Seiko dials are made by
• 16:32
  hand in two factories in or in two facilities in Japan's
• 16:36
  mountainous regions and the Shinchu Watch Studio in Nagano.
• 16:40
  And then there's also the Watch Studio in Iwate.
• 16:44
  And they're inspired by these nature scapes, natural
• 16:48
  landscapes. And I think people who know
• 16:49
  Grand Seiko know this. The textures, the dials, the
• 16:52
  colors, the patterns that grand Seiko dials have, they're not
• 16:56
  printed. They're formed through kind of a
• 16:59
  material material process. Typically they're hand
• 17:02
  lacquered. The snowflake textures, for
• 17:03
  example, they're achieved by pressing and then color
• 17:06
  variations and gradations and finishing.
• 17:09
  And the most famous one is obviously the note, the
• 17:11
  snowflake. Most folks know this.
• 17:13
  The reference of the most recent models is the SBGA 211.
• 17:18
  It's a white textured spring Dr. Dial, whose surface was created
• 17:22
  by pressing this special resin to achieve a texture that
• 17:26
  replicates irregularity, which is ironic.
• 17:29
  There's this layered surface that basically makes it look
• 17:31
  like freshly fall and snow. And when you look at it a
• 17:33
  different light, it changes. Under direct light, it's almost
• 17:36
  pure white and its shadows kind of can deepen it.
• 17:40
  But then under a loop, every section of the surface, you
• 17:43
  start to notice that there's something very unique about
• 17:45
  this. And I think that's what's
• 17:46
  gorgeous about these dials is that I think a lot of folks will
• 17:49
  go well, everything is about perfection.
• 17:50
  Specifically when you look at the case and the polishing and
• 17:53
  everything is so perfect and then you have this dial that is
• 17:56
  perfectly imperfect and it's just it is it is a sight to see.
• 18:00
  And that is what this is what Grand Seiko is about, right?
• 18:03
  That when we talk about Grand Seiko, the Grand Seiko, the
• 18:06
  snowflake itself has become, I think one of the most recognized
• 18:08
  watch styles in modern horology, not because Grand Seiko marketed
• 18:13
  it hard. They they didn't because people
• 18:15
  who saw it in person came back and could not stop talking about
• 18:18
  it. And this is what Grand Seiko is.
• 18:20
  It's an observatory grade level of precision and ambition and
• 18:25
  it's applied to watches that just happened to look like these
• 18:27
  Japanese mountain escapes and they're they're stunning.
• 18:30
  Now the current mechanical caliber known as the nine SA 5
• 18:34
  grand Sego's most recent high beat automatic has a dual
• 18:37
  impulse escapement and it delivers power way more
• 18:40
  efficiently than a traditional Swiss lever escapement ever
• 18:43
  could has 80 hours of power again, 36,000 vibrations per
• 18:47
  hour. They're available in the
• 18:48
  Heritage collection and they're around 5000 to 6000 bucks at the
• 18:52
  time of this recording for steel pieces.
• 18:54
  And obviously they're considerably more for titanium
• 18:56
  and gold and limited, limited editions.
• 18:58
  But you're talking anywhere of, you know, a third to half of
• 19:01
  what is being offered from other manufacturers that you're not
• 19:04
  getting as accurate or as well finished watches, dials,
• 19:09
  movements, etcetera. Now segment 4, we're going to
• 19:10
  talk about Credor Credor and I would say that this is Japan's
• 19:14
  secret apex. Now I want to tell you about a
• 19:17
  brand that you you may not have heard of, even if you consider
• 19:20
  yourself a fairly watched serious enthusiast, even if you
• 19:23
  follow the industry closely. Now you're going to hear Credo
• 19:26
  and you're going to hear Credo. It's, again, this is ironic
• 19:30
  because the word credo, I believe, comes from French, as
• 19:33
  in like credo, it's the Crest of gold.
• 19:36
  So Credo is Seiko's Hot Horology subsidiary.
• 19:39
  They're founded in 1974. And specifically, they were made
• 19:42
  to compete with Switzerland's highest level of luxury
• 19:45
  watchmaking. And they have mechanical and
• 19:48
  quartz pieces, pieces in precious metals.
• 19:50
  They're available almost exclusively in Japan and that's
• 19:54
  changing now more recently, but it's still you're typically if
• 19:57
  you're on Cornell 24 you're you're put picking something up
• 19:59
  from Japan and they're at select retail locations, but they're
• 20:02
  extremely limited quality quantities.
• 20:04
  Ecuador is made specifically in micro artist studios.
• 20:08
  Their two room workshops in Seiko's Epson's facility and I
• 20:12
  believe the the city is pronounced Shiojiri.
• 20:16
  See Shiojiri 3 man, I'm a mess. There's a small town in the
• 20:21
  mountains of Nagano. And the studio was established
• 20:24
  in around the year 2000 and it has 10 people, watchmakers and
• 20:28
  engineers. And together they produce
• 20:30
  between 30 and 40 watches per year, like total across
• 20:34
  everything that they make. Sounds a lot like hot horology,
• 20:36
  doesn't it? Now the models at the Micro
• 20:38
  Artist Studios make the creator Ichi 2 and at their you know,
• 20:43
  the time, they're kind of, you know, time only dress watch.
• 20:45
  They also have a minute repeater.
• 20:47
  They have the sun are they have a they have an 8 day, which uses
• 20:51
  kind of the same workshop that is using kind of the 9 RO one
• 20:55
  there, but they have triple barrels and eight days of power
• 20:58
  reserve. And let me tell you kind of how
• 20:59
  the micro auditors studios how they kind of came into a current
• 21:02
  form. This is part of the story that I
• 21:04
  want you to kind of hold on to. OK, I'm going to mess up some
• 21:07
  stuff in here. I got I have tons of notes and
• 21:09
  I'm still going to, I'm going to still mess up pronunciation, but
• 21:12
  I'll do my best. When the studio was established
• 21:14
  in 2000, the team's founding director, it's Kenji Shio Hara.
• 21:21
  Kenji Shio Hara. That's that's pretty close.
• 21:24
  He made a trip to Switzerland specifically, he went to the
• 21:26
  workshop of Philippe before, and that's the same Philippe before
• 21:29
  that we've discussed multiple times in the show.
• 21:30
  So arguably, again, one of the greatest watchmakers, living
• 21:33
  watchmakers on the planet, and the man whose simplicity, the
• 21:36
  watch simplicity, set the benchmark for what is considered
• 21:39
  fine finishing in this modern era.
• 21:40
  So he went to learn and guess what Dufour showed him
• 21:44
  specifically, He showed him how he polishes the beveled edges of
• 21:48
  his movement bridges, what is considered anglage.
• 21:51
  And he used a piece of dried wood.
• 21:53
  And the wood is gentian and it's a flowering plant and it's found
• 21:59
  in the Alpine regions of Switzerland.
• 22:01
  And they take them and they dry stalks that are soft enough to
• 22:05
  Polish so that these dried stalks, they they become soft
• 22:08
  enough to Polish steel surfaces basically to a mirror finish.
• 22:11
  But they don't scratch and they hold a shape for a precise
• 22:16
  englage work. And so they can cut them and
• 22:17
  shape them basically these tiny little pieces of wood that
• 22:20
  they're using to, to to Polish. And so he went back to Japan
• 22:25
  with these samples of wood. But that is an Alpine plant, and
• 22:30
  it doesn't grow in Japan. And the team was basically
• 22:33
  dependent on Swiss imports for a material that was really central
• 22:37
  to their finishing method. And something happened.
• 22:39
  They found one more piece of Japan to use.
• 22:42
  So a university in, I believe it's Hokia.
• 22:47
  Hokkido. Hokkido.
• 22:49
  I'm going to say Hokkido. It's H OK KAIOAIDO.
• 22:53
  And they were cultivating this plant for medical research and a
• 22:58
  micro artist studio struck a deal with the university and the
• 23:03
  the Hokiado Jensen became this polishing wood for the Kredor
• 23:08
  Ichi. Now the result is basically what
• 23:11
  they would consider this polishing technique that they
• 23:14
  learned from Dufour, but is executed with Japanese wood on
• 23:18
  Japanese movements. And that means that they can get
• 23:20
  the Anglage on the Kredor Ichi 2, which is basically this
• 23:25
  Japanese technique in every practical sense, even though
• 23:28
  it's originally Swiss in in origin.
• 23:31
  And what this means, it's the cultural exchange of hot
• 23:33
  horology. The same way the Swiss
• 23:36
  watchmakers learned American production techniques in the
• 23:39
  19th century and then took them over to Switzerland, The
• 23:42
  Japanese watch made occurs. They studied Swiss precision in
• 23:46
  the 20th century and then the craft moves and where it lands
• 23:50
  and it became the place where again, they're doing it now.
• 23:53
  So Dufour himself has spoken out about the Credor Ichi 2.
• 23:57
  He pronounces it very pure when he talks about his the finishing
• 24:02
  and coming from Phillipe 2 four, that's not like a casual
• 24:04
  compliment. The Credor Ichi 2, it's 39mm,
• 24:07
  it's a platinum case. It's a porcelain dial.
• 24:09
  They're hand painted by a single Craftsman who's trained 3 years
• 24:13
  specifically in ceramics. The caliber is the 7R1 four.
• 24:17
  It's a spring Dr. movement with this torque recovery system that
• 24:20
  redirects excessive mainspring torque back to the barrel and it
• 24:24
  extends the power reserves like it's it's it's sort of like
• 24:27
  regenerating itself. And the power reserve is 60
• 24:29
  hours now and the movement bridges are arranged to
• 24:32
  represent the regions of the area.
• 24:35
  And the central barrel is decorated with this Bellflower,
• 24:38
  which is a symbol of the city. So between 20 and 25 corridor
• 24:42
  Ichi 2 watches leave the studio per year and the price is
• 24:45
  approximately $50,000 for a platinum example.
• 24:49
  Now most of you again probably will never own one, but I want
• 24:52
  you to know that it exists. There's also the baby Ichi
• 24:55
  that's again another, we can go on a different tangent on a
• 24:58
  different time, but it's a much more accessible price range
• 25:01
  under typically $10,000. You can find those they're
• 25:04
  printed dials. But again, everything else is
• 25:06
  pretty, pretty remarkable to look at.
• 25:08
  Now again, most of us are probably never going to own the
• 25:11
  Ichi 2. But again, we want we want to
• 25:13
  talk about them. We want to know that they exist.
• 25:15
  Because when someone tells you that Japanese watchmaking is
• 25:17
  like this budget alternative to Swiss watchmaking, the Ichi 2 is
• 25:21
  the watch that you can describe to them and go seriously, now
• 25:24
  this is what a Japan can do. I think at the apex in the
• 25:28
  mountains with 10 people with specific wood that was coming
• 25:31
  from like a University Hospital research program project, right.
• 25:35
  And now let's talk about Citizens.
• 25:36
  Citizens, this estimated giant brand 4 is, I think it's a tonal
• 25:40
  shift and it's away from these mountain studios and back to
• 25:43
  kind of the industrial scale Citizen watch company.
• 25:46
  They were founded in 1918 and the name comes from 1924 when
• 25:49
  they released her their first pocket watch named and they just
• 25:53
  named it Citizen. This kind of explicit ambition
• 25:56
  that it would be a watch for everyone, right?
• 25:58
  Kind of the idea of a Volkswagen, right?
• 26:00
  The people's car, right? The idea of Citizen making
• 26:03
  meaning that this watch is literally for everyone, for all
• 26:06
  citizens. Citizen is by several measures
• 26:09
  it's the most important watch company and by a ton of measures
• 26:13
  in the world, they makeover 1,000,000 watches per year.
• 26:16
  They own Bulaba Fredri Constant. They own Alpena, Arnold and son
• 26:21
  and making them quietly one of the largest watch groups
• 26:25
  anywhere in global horology. But the thing that I want you to
• 26:28
  understand about citizen is their commitment to precision.
• 26:32
  Their flagship achievement I would say is the caliber 0100.
• 26:36
  It's an eco drive solar movement.
• 26:37
  It's accurate to plus or one seconds per year, one second per
• 26:41
  year without an external signal. No GPS, no radio tower, no
• 26:46
  atomic clock connections, just purely internal from the watch.
• 26:50
  The movement achieves this by using a proprietary like an AT
• 26:54
  cut quartz crystal oscillator. And they'd normally find this in
• 26:57
  like precision instruments, like computers, more things that are
• 26:59
  like temperature controlled compensation.
• 27:01
  So the oscillator at like they they oscillate typically twice
• 27:05
  the frequency of a standard movement, which is insane
• 27:08
  because they're already oscillating super quickly.
• 27:09
  The result is again, the most accurate autonomous wristwatch
• 27:13
  movement that was ever made and in all of the history of
• 27:17
  watchmaking. Again, one second per year for a
• 27:20
  watch that's not connected to the Internet.
• 27:22
  The caliber 0100 is available in kind of what they would consider
• 27:25
  the Citizen series. It's a platinum or a premium
• 27:28
  line in the citizen range and they feature super titanium
• 27:32
  cases, sapphire crystals, their hand finished dials and the
• 27:36
  prices start wait for the price price 3 grand for standard
• 27:40
  references, 3 grand for the most accurate watch that you can get
• 27:43
  stand alone watch on the planet. And so citizens broader
• 27:46
  contribution again is the ecodrive.
• 27:47
  Now the prices may have gone up a bit from the recording, so
• 27:50
  don't quote me on that. The again, the ecodrive
• 27:52
  technology itself, solar charging that converts light and
• 27:56
  really any light indoor light electric, you know it's going to
• 27:59
  it could be incandescent, it could be LED lighting and lights
• 28:02
  from your through a window. It's going to charge up the
• 28:05
  battery that's that's on board. And so again, and it it doesn't
• 28:08
  need a battery. Citizens been developing this
• 28:10
  project and this technology since the 70s and they've
• 28:13
  produced over a billion with AB billion eco drive movements.
• 28:18
  The technology underlies everything from their entry
• 28:20
  level pro master that we discussed in the tool watch
• 28:23
  episodes all the way up to the caliber 0100.
• 28:27
  And the other citizen line that we is worth knowing is the
• 28:31
  series 8. And a buddy of mine has the
• 28:33
  Serie has a series 8 in his collection in art and our text
• 28:37
  group and I'm pretty jealous of this watch.
• 28:39
  And the series 8 is their attempt at a serious mechanical
• 28:42
  automatic watch and it competes I think aesthetically with Swiss
• 28:46
  mid tiers. It's been received with mixed
• 28:48
  enthusiasm and this is I think part of it is the again, it
• 28:52
  represents citizens recognition to some collectors that they
• 28:55
  want this traditional mechanical watch from Japan, not just like
• 28:59
  solar tech. Now, citizen is not the most
• 29:02
  glamorous brand in this episode. They're not Grand Seiko and
• 29:07
  they're not credor, but they are a company that has made the most
• 29:10
  accurate autonomous watches in history.
• 29:13
  And they deserve to be said and brought up in this conversation.
• 29:17
  And I'll say this. I have, I think I've brought
• 29:19
  them up, but I have multiple Citizen watches.
• 29:22
  Again, pre, even when our home was broken into here and in
• 29:25
  Southern California when my parents passed away, I had two
• 29:28
  watches that I'd forgotten about and one that I wore in high
• 29:31
  school and one that I wore in college.
• 29:33
  Both Citizens, both. One needed a battery. 1 was an
• 29:36
  Eco drive. I pulled the Eco drive out
• 29:38
  thinking, well, you know, this thing's going to be dead.
• 29:40
  It's been sitting in a drawer. There's no way put it in the sun
• 29:42
  for a day. So and behold, the watch is back
• 29:44
  to life. I still have that watch.
• 29:46
  The other one needed a battery. I popped the battery into it.
• 29:48
  It still holds time. It still keeps time and I still
• 29:51
  wear that watch, my high school watch, right?
• 29:53
  I'm go, we're going on like 30 years right from that, from the
• 29:56
  moment that thing was on my wrist.
• 29:58
  Now when you get into segment 6, I want to get to get into a
• 30:00
  watch called the Casio Oceanis. It's kind of a Japanese watch
• 30:05
  that like nobody talks about. And this is kind of my wild
• 30:07
  card. I think I'm going to be brief
• 30:09
  here, but I think they're fascinating.
• 30:10
  So brief detour, you know, Casio, Casio, G shock, and then
• 30:14
  we covered them as in the tool watch section there, you know,
• 30:17
  the the matrix calculator watch that your uncle wore in like
• 30:20
  1996. Casio is the kind of the
• 30:23
  consumer electronics giant. They're they're not a watch
• 30:26
  brand in like the serious sense, which is strange for me to say
• 30:29
  that because I know I can get ripped in comments, but like
• 30:31
  they're a consumer electronics brand, except, except there is a
• 30:35
  Casio line that almost nobody in the Western market really talks
• 30:39
  about. And it's genuinely interesting.
• 30:41
  Of course everyone's going to talk about G shock and all that
• 30:42
  kind of stuff, but no one talks about Oceanus, right?
• 30:45
  It's, it's available almost exclusively in Japan and they're
• 30:48
  very select Asian markets and it's, it's slowly making its way
• 30:51
  West. A range of solar powered
• 30:53
  multiband radio controlled titanium watches, meaning that
• 30:56
  they're GPS corrected over time. They're solar powered.
• 30:59
  There's titanium construction and in cases that like genuinely
• 31:03
  look like they belong in the risks of someone who's
• 31:05
  thoughtfully, you know, considered their watch.
• 31:07
  They also have a Manta line, which is kind of like the
• 31:10
  collector's choice 42mm. They have these multi layered
• 31:13
  dials, they have ceramic bezels and they're priced like between
• 31:16
  515 bucks. And if you import one, which you
• 31:19
  can do through Japanese Gray market sellers, you're, you're
• 31:22
  getting, I think it's technically superior solar radio
• 31:26
  controlled watch that's well designed, it's packaged well,
• 31:28
  and it's like a fraction of the price of these Swiss
• 31:30
  equivalents. And so I mentioned Oceanis here
• 31:33
  because it represents something important.
• 31:35
  It's the gap between what Japan makes and what Japan's
• 31:39
  reputation is and what they look like in the West.
• 31:41
  Now, Oceanis watches exist and they're genuinely good.
• 31:44
  And almost no Western watch enthusiast that I, that I've
• 31:48
  seen in small groups has them. You'll see them online.
• 31:50
  Obviously the the online space makes the world seem smaller,
• 31:54
  but but they in in in retrospect or in the world you they're
• 31:58
  really hard to find. So the gap, I think is this
• 32:00
  whole argument, but it's just kind of in miniature.
• 32:02
  Now I run, I have a Japanese exclusive astron from Seiko
• 32:08
  ASTRON and it's funny because it's it will only receive a
• 32:12
  signal from Japan. And so there's ways to hack
• 32:14
  those watches, but they're also just high actually accuracy
• 32:16
  course watches. And it's just a sleeper hit for
• 32:19
  me. It's octagonal cased.
• 32:21
  It's a watch that nobody else would would probably know.
• 32:24
  It's it's has a micro adjust in the clasp and Seiko just doesn't
• 32:27
  even talk about it. They just snuck it in there,
• 32:29
  right Titanium case. And so I think I've posted that
• 32:32
  watch on watch crunch in the past and it's just it's just a
• 32:34
  good watch. But again, nobody talks about
• 32:36
  them. OK.
• 32:37
  And it's also one of the watches that, you know, it has a, it
• 32:40
  has, it's solar powered. And so when I, you know, leave
• 32:43
  it and hide it for a while, it will keep time, but it will, it
• 32:46
  will power down. So when I take it, my kids like
• 32:48
  to take it and put in the sun and then it will auto set the
• 32:51
  time and auto set the date. It's just pretty cool.
• 32:54
  Now segment 7, let's talk about my honorable mentions.
• 32:57
  I'm going to talk about King Seko and also going to talk
• 32:59
  about Orient. Now 2 quick mentions before we
• 33:02
  get into what my thesis is for this whole thing.
• 33:04
  King Seiko again, Seiko's luxury brand recently revived.
• 33:08
  They sat alongside Grand Seiko in the 60s and 70s and where
• 33:11
  Grand Seiko was Seiko's precision line, King Seiko was
• 33:14
  kind of like their design first line.
• 33:17
  And they have like now they have revival pieces, particularly
• 33:20
  they have their 110th anniversary edition, a bunch of
• 33:23
  re issues that have been coming out, tons of stunning pieces
• 33:25
  that have this kind of somewhat in some some respects they're
• 33:29
  restrained and other time they're a little bit wild.
• 33:31
  And again, their price typically about half of what you would
• 33:34
  find a Grand Seiko for. So if you want this deep
• 33:37
  historical, historical kind of resonance and you want to
• 33:41
  connect to Seiko, but you want it to be like around 2 Grand
• 33:44
  King Seiko, I think is where to look now.
• 33:46
  Orient is owned by Seiko and they've owned Seiko.
• 33:49
  Seiko has owned them since about 2009.
• 33:51
  You can correct me on that, but my homework had two different
• 33:54
  numbers and I'm going to go with 2009.
• 33:56
  And they kind of maintain their own design language and
• 33:59
  manufacturing identity, which is pretty cool.
• 34:01
  The Orient Star, for example, that line offers these genuine
• 34:04
  in house automatic movements with exhibition case backs.
• 34:08
  They have beautifully skeletonized versions as well.
• 34:10
  If you're into the skeletonized where you can see your ear
• 34:12
  movements from front, from the dial side.
• 34:14
  And they're like around 3 to 400 bucks.
• 34:17
  And I think they're one of the great value plays in gold global
• 34:19
  watchmaking. And again, people just don't
• 34:21
  talk about them. The Bambino line, for example,
• 34:23
  is killer. Now, segment 8, I'm going to
• 34:24
  talk about what the thesis is and what Japan has built.
• 34:27
  So here is what Japan built. And let me say it plainly
• 34:31
  because I think it needs to be said in this this directly.
• 34:34
  Japan built the most precise production wristwatch movement
• 34:39
  in history, Citizens Caliber 0100, one second per year.
• 34:44
  Japan built a movement architecture that exists nowhere
• 34:48
  else in the world. Spring Drive, a mainspring
• 34:52
  powered watch regulated by an electromagnetic brake and a
• 34:55
  quartz oscillator. Neither mechanical nor quote the
• 34:59
  quartz. Something genuinely new,
• 35:01
  something genuinely revolutionary.
• 35:04
  It was conceived by one man, developed for 20 years, released
• 35:07
  to the market 14 months after that man passed away.
• 35:10
  Japan built a finishing tradition in the with homework
• 35:15
  from Philippe Dufour, the greatest living Swiss
• 35:18
  watchmaker, who calls their work pure.
• 35:21
  In the two room workshop in the mountains of Nagano.
• 35:24
  You have this wood that's sourced from a university in
• 35:27
  Japan and they make 25 watches per year.
• 35:30
  And I'm not going to get into the polishing and all that kind
• 35:33
  of stuff. You, you know, if you've, you've
• 35:35
  heard about Japanese polishing, you know that the terms and all
• 35:38
  that kind of stuff. I'm not going to beat that into
• 35:39
  the ground. You can go all over Reddit and
• 35:41
  get all that information. So I'm trying to give you
• 35:43
  something different here. Japan has built a series of
• 35:46
  dials that look like mountain landscapes because they're made
• 35:49
  by people who live near mountain landscapes.
• 35:51
  Snowflake textures, lacquer dials, porcelain fired in
• 35:55
  studios that are near the factories that they make these
• 35:58
  movements. They're not decorative
• 36:00
  exercises. They're, they're, they're
• 36:02
  aesthetic expressions of a place, things that they see
• 36:05
  outside. So again, the Swiss have won the
• 36:08
  marketing war. The Swiss have boutiques and
• 36:11
  they have celebrity ambassadors and they have record auctions
• 36:14
  and they have ho dinky covers and they have cultural fluency.
• 36:18
  The Swiss watch making is genuinely great and we've spent
• 36:22
  like 11 episodes saying so. But Japan, quiet, steady,
• 36:26
  without needing your or my approval.
• 36:30
  They won the engineering war, full stop.
• 36:32
  And in a small workshop in Japan, they quietly drew the
• 36:37
  line for what is going to what I think is this finishing war.
• 36:42
  They, their movements are finished to a standard that is
• 36:46
  not replicatable. And I want Western collectors to
• 36:48
  know this, not to replace their relationship with Swiss
• 36:51
  watchmaking. That's not the goal.
• 36:53
  The goal is to compete, to understand that this hobby
• 36:56
  contains a bunch of different variables and it is a full
• 37:00
  global scape. But Japan deserves our
• 37:03
  attention. They are not a budget
• 37:05
  alternative. They are a parallel tradition.
• 37:09
  And I think for folks that are wearing Grand Seikos, lots of
• 37:12
  respect to them as well because they are they're finished in a
• 37:15
  way and they're there. There's a lot of attention to
• 37:18
  detail and I think a lot of other companies will they would
• 37:21
  rather just throw on a random micro adjust versus considering,
• 37:25
  well, maybe this should be really comfortable and rest
• 37:27
  right now. Next, let's get into Japan Part
• 37:30
  2. So next episode we're going to
• 37:32
  talk about the Japanese independence.
• 37:34
  So we covered some big names today, some big institutions,
• 37:36
  the houses, the brands, the factories in mountain cities and
• 37:39
  decades of history. But in Japan, just like
• 37:41
  Switzerland, just like America, they have their independent
• 37:44
  watchmakers as well. Individuals are very small
• 37:47
  operations making watches by hand in very tiny quantities to
• 37:51
  extraordinary standards. And so I'm going to get into
• 37:54
  some of the brands here now, the independents are, in my view,
• 37:58
  among the most exciting stories in watchmaking right now that
• 38:01
  again, no one's talking about no one in the Western watch
• 38:03
  community knows these brands by name.
• 38:05
  But by the end, I hope you will. And hopefully I'll have a couple
• 38:09
  of weeks to to prepare and practice my my pronunciation.
• 38:12
  So if I screwed these up now, maybe they'll be better in the
• 38:14
  next episode or maybe they'll be worse.
• 38:16
  I believe the first one's going to be Hajimi ASA Aloka Asoka.
• 38:22
  He's a solo watchmaker and he's in Tokyo.
• 38:24
  He's member of the AHCI. It's like this prestigious
• 38:27
  Independent Watchmakers association.
• 38:29
  The dude builds Torbians and chronographs and he builds them,
• 38:32
  wait for it entirely by hand alone from individual
• 38:36
  components. And he makes like roughly 5
• 38:38
  watches per year. And he would be, I think, the
• 38:41
  analogy to Philippe Dufour, but in Japan.
• 38:44
  Next one, we're going to go to Nayo Nayoya.
• 38:47
  That's NAOYA Hida, and he worked at Patek Philippe and then at FP
• 38:53
  Jorn before launching his own brand.
• 38:56
  He has an NH Type 1 and NH Type 2.
• 38:58
  They're among the most thoughtfully proportioned
• 39:01
  classical dress watches being made anywhere in the world right
• 39:03
  now by anyone. And he makes like less than 50 a
• 39:07
  year. You have Kikuno as the last
• 39:10
  name. I think the first name is Masha
• 39:13
  Hiro. Masha Hiro Kikuno, it's pretty I
• 39:17
  don't know, I'm a mess. Another member of the ACHI.
• 39:20
  He makes turbians again, entirely by hand, almost unknown
• 39:23
  outside of Japan. He works in a kind of a
• 39:26
  tradition that the complete individual watchmaker that is, I
• 39:30
  think vanishing in the world. And he's just a very much a
• 39:33
  reminder of the other like Kita, for example, and the concept of
• 39:37
  of what Asahoka, for example, and how they're making a handful
• 39:40
  of watches, very reminiscent for me of what Reshef is making.
• 39:44
  And again, accessible entry point into some of these you're
• 39:47
  going to get into like multiple brands.
• 39:49
  They're they're collector watchmaking, but they, they
• 39:52
  don't require you like sell a kidney or a car.
• 39:55
  Some of them are like sub 5 or $6000.
• 39:57
  Now, again, there's this design that's unmistakably Japanese,
• 40:00
  but they are very hard to get. So Japan, I'm going to say this
• 40:04
  has its own recheck rechebes and they have had them for decades.
• 40:07
  We just haven't been paying enough attention.
• 40:09
  So that's going to be Part 2 of the.
• 40:11
  This kind of two-part series in Japan OK, let's close this out.
• 40:14
  So that has been episode 16 of what's on your restate if this
• 40:17
  episode changed how you think about Japan or confirmed what
• 40:21
  you already suspected or you've been sitting at the keyboard
• 40:23
  waiting to hate on me because you you're tired of the Grand
• 40:26
  Seiko Bros on Reddit, I'm going crazy.
• 40:29
  Feel free to light me up. But I have a deep respect for
• 40:32
  not only the Japanese culture, but also the Japanese
• 40:34
  watchmaking and the fact that they just don't pour money into
• 40:37
  marketing and instead pour all that time and effort into being
• 40:40
  respectful of your wrist. And I think that's pretty cool.
• 40:43
  Now if any of this has resonated with you, find me tell me.
• 40:46
  I'm particularly curious to hear for listeners who already wear
• 40:48
  Grand Seikos or have credors on their wrist or have had in the
• 40:51
  past, tell me what it's like in person.
• 40:53
  I want to know and to the the origin of Grand Sego's Spring
• 40:58
  Drive. I'm going to do my best not to
• 41:01
  mess this up again because I think it's it's it's in respect.
• 41:04
  Yoshikazu AKA Haine, who died 52, died at age 52 without
• 41:09
  seeing his spring Dr. movement on a wrist.
• 41:12
  You earned it. 26 years is a long time to believe in
• 41:15
  something and the watches you made possible are on people's
• 41:18
  wrists right now. That's not nothing, that's
• 41:21
  that's everything. I'm watch Offski.
• 41:23
  Take care of yourselves and wear something good.
• 41:25
  I'll see you in the next episode.
• 41:42
  Look where the cedar leans, the lays keep turning slow.
• 41:48
  Small rooms, sharp hands, one loop, 1 steady close calipers
• 41:57
  kiss the steel. Every edge gets named.
• 42:04
  Nothing loud in here, just time may change from the bench to the
• 42:12
  case, from the spring to the seal, they chase a perfect tick
• 42:16
  that you can really feel. No parade, no flash.
• 42:20
  The line stay true, quiet work in the hills and it comes
• 42:25
  through. Grand Seiko Crater, Citizen in
• 42:31
  the rain. Grand Seiko Crater Micro Studios
• 42:35
  Mountain Air fingertips and grin the most accurate watch the
• 42:43
  smallest visible scar. Quiet.
• 42:47
  It's loud. That's how legends are hands in
• 42:55
  white cotton cloth files like winter moons.
• 43:02
  A bridge gets bevels bright then checked under.
• 43:18
  In a case few people ever see, from the bench to the case from
• 43:26
  the spring of the seal, they chase a perfect tick that you
• 43:29
  can really feel. No parade, no flash, just the
• 43:33
  line. Stay true, quiet.
• 43:35
  Work in the hills and it comes through.
• 43:39
  Grand Seiko credo. Citizen in the rain, Grand
• 43:45
  Seiko, Credo, Julio's mountain air, Fingertips and green.
• 43:51
  The most accurate watch the smallest visible scar.
• 43:59
  Quiet beats loud. That's how legends are.
• 44:07
  Not a shout, not a stunt, not a name on a wall.
• 44:11
  It's fire only edge. It's a market, can't recall.
• 44:14
  It's the hand over hand. It's the patient craft.
• 44:18
  A mountain keeps it secret in the second slide.
• 44:26
  Grand Seiko Crater Citizen in the rain.
• 44:31
  Francisco Crater Micro Studios, Mountain air, fingertips and
• 44:38
  grain. The most accurate watch the
• 44:42
  smallest visible sky. Quiet beats loud.
• 44:49
  That's how legends are.