Seiko & Citizen Watch Forum Message Archive

who also mentioned how incredibly in-depth Japanese watch magazines are. You should see the articles on Rolex! They go thru ever nuance of dial variations, movements, bracelets, and on and on, month after month, page after page, magazine after magazine. If I were a Rolex guy and translated some of those for those guys, I'd probably be a TimeZone hero or something!

Articles on Japanese watches are really a minor issue in Japanese magazines. Often, there will only be one or two VERY short articles on Seiko, Citizen, Orient, Casio or Ricoh in most of them.

As for why the Japanese magazines are so good, my opinion is that it is part of the Japanese cultural heritage to "reverse engineer" things, figure them out, and then to make those things in Japan even better. A good example from ancient times might be what they did with sword technology (which came from China; via Mongolia?) or with ceramics (introduced from Korea -- I'm thinking tea bowls here).

As an aside, I knew a guy who worked for Panasonic at the factory in Kumamoto, Japan. He taught engineers English, which of course is important for studying technical manuals from competitors abroad. What made me laugh is the Panasonic guys used to joke that they didn't have an R & D department -- that Sony did all their research and development for them!