In part 1 of this series we looked at some things you can do before you get to Tokyo to increase your watch shopping success and prevent divorce.
In part 2 we are going to look at some general approaches to organizing your to time but first we need to discuss the Seiko Museum and Nakano Broadway.
A word on the Seiko Museum Ginza
TL;DR The Seiko Museum in Ginza will be the nail in the coffin for your relationship if you let it.
It seems that for the average watch nerd with a keyboard or podcast, the road to salvation goes through the Seiko Museum in Ginza. So does the road to divorce I am afraid.
The Seiko Museum is nifty and all but keep your expectations low if you hope to use the museum to light a horological fire in a spouse more inclined toward drowning their pain in sake than feigning interest in hearing you squeak and squawk about your watch hobby.
From the vantage point of someone trying to help you indulge your watch habit while simultaneously saving your relationship, The Seiko Museum isn’t the Mecca that watch nerds make it out to be. I estimate the chances of the Seiko Museum convincing your spouse that an SKX or spring drive are cool between 0.01% and 0.015%. The bathrooms at the museum, however, are dollhouse pristine so if your spouse needs to void, the museum might be useful if they just had a hip replacement and cant make it to the sixth floor of Itoya.
If you are on the fence about how The Seiko Museum will impact your relationship, you are encouraged to burn your watch nerd matches in some other way. Dragging someone to Ginza for the Seiko Museum, at least unless you are already in the area and have 45 minutes to kill, is a watch nerd transgression that may have untoward consequences.
A word on Nakano Broadway
Nakano broadway is essential if you want to visit one of the more unique aspects of Tokyo watch shopping. There is a reason it is on every watch shopping Tokyo list. Those lists, however, never mention puppies with diarrhea or plastic boobies. Nakano Broadway isn’t like other luxury watch shopping experiences.
To get a feel for Nakano Broadway, picture a repurposed elementary school, built in 1977 then turned into a Payless Shoe and Ross level mall (e.g. lower end mall), complete with low ceilings, an arcade spewing the standard pachinko ball dropping noise, a steamy pet store filled with puppies laying down 5.25 grade diarrhea (as graded by the Purina Fecal Scoring Chart), and any number of dusty manga shops filled with books and figures replete with massive plastic boobies. Now add about 10 luxury watch shops with $100 million in inventory into the mix and you will start to get a feel for Nakano Broadway.
Now take that stew of feces, puppies, boobs, manga, pachinko noise, and watches AND THEN stick it 30 minutes outside of anywhere you might be staying. THAT is Nakano Broadway.
It is almost like the Japanese woke up one day and said “F&%# it. Let’s just go full bizarro world and do what we want with luxury watch shopping because diarrhea, plastic boobs, and watches go together like the Olsen twins.”
I am no marriage counselor but, at the risk of causing you some headaches, I would totally burn a match on this one. You might, however, want to take a minute or two to prepare your spouse for where you are dragging them. Do mention the diarrhea and manga.
If you can make it to Nakano Broadway, you are going to find the highest concentration of used watch stores in Tokyo. What you are also going to find is that the selection in Nakano is deeper, more interesting, and maybe even more curated for watch nerds. There is an ample concentration of Submariners, GMT’s, and Speedmasters, but, at least in my experience, the vintage Heuers, Wittnauers, Breitling, Fortis, etc. are more likely to be found in Nakano than in the more touristy areas.
5 approaches to watch shopping Tokyo to maximize your success and help prevent divorce
If you are traveling with someone else or have limited time, trying to see every watch in Tokyo is an unattainable goal. Your traveling partner will lose their mind and leave you while you are deodorizing atop the Toto. My thesis is that you need to make compromises to maximize time and minimize stress on your relationships. Your best bet is to focus on finding a specific reference you are interested in and focus your time around searching for that reference. If, however, you are just browsing and are on a mission of discovery but there is still a ton to see.
Rather than offering you a list of stores around the city, you can find those elsewhere, I offer you 5 general approaches to watch shopping Tokyo. Each of these scenarios is predicated upon on a compromise between watch shopping and divorce prevention. This is not an exhaustive guide to watch shopping Tokyo.
Scenario 1: If you have only one one swing at watch shopping because your spouse will beat you senseless if you drag them from place to place AND/OR your really just want a Rolex, go to Nakano Broadway. Get in. Get out. Get on with your vacation. You will need a half day between travel to Nakano Broadway, shopping, looking at the puppies, smelling the diarrhea, and going back and forth between stores trying to make a decision. The main issue for your relationship is that nothing opens until 11AM so your half day is actually the middle of the day. Deal with it. Call in a favor. Burn a watch shopping match in Nakano Broadway. If you haven’t done your research and you want an assist buying a Rolex, dont forget to contact Austin
Scenario 2: If you are looking for a specific reference, especially if that reference is even remotely off kilter, weird, or uncommon you should 1) shop ahead with Rakuten.co.jp and Chrono 24, and 2) go on one or more surgical strikes. This is the most efficient use of your time and some of the really neat stuff is found in tiny pawn shops, camera stores, or even located just outside the city and there is no way you would find them without knowing where they are loaded ahead of time. I could make an argument that to get the most out of Tokyo you should really try to search for specific references and identify where they are located before you arrive. Conversely, browsing with hopes to stumble on something can be an exhausting waste of your precious time.
Scenario 3: If you are browsing with no specific goal in mind, want to cruise the boutiques looking at new watches, want to see some higher end vintage, and you don’t want to walk all that far or expend too much effort, spend your day in Ginza. Ginza is similar to Beverly Hills or 5th Avenue. You won’t find much of anything here you cant find anywhere else in the world but if you want to get hands on with anything new from the major brands in a few block radius, Ginza is all you need. If your spouse is into high end fashion it will be a win win. Watchnian, Ginza Rasin, and others have stores on or right off the main strip with used inventory. The Seiko Museum is in Ginza if you have extra time but you will need reservations in advance. You will also need reservations for Chrono Theory.
Scenario 4: If your just browsing and you or your partner has any interest in street fashion, vintage fashion, sneakers, and you want to do a solid day of shopping that will leave everyone involved smashed in a puddle of exhaustion, spend the day in Shibuya and Harajuku. If you do a bunch of stops and/or you are into fashion other than watch fashion you will probably be better off with two days. There is a ton in this area you I won’t see much anywhere else. On a map it looks really far but it is 100% walkable if you have any sort of fitness and are free of degenerative joint or cardiac disease. Briefly, start at Shibuya station, hit Watchnian and House Kihiroba (they are right next to one another) then work your way up towards Harajuku. Shop till you drop in Shibuya (there is a ton between Center Street and the region around Tower records including jewlers selling new watches), cut up Cat Street (Corleone is all time if you are interested in vintage Rolex and Tudor). Then keep going all the way up to Ometesando Hills (another mini Beverly Hills area with boutiques selling new watches and an Ishida selling preowned). Harajuku is adjacent to Omotesando Hills and is rich in street fashion, bag charms, and cotton candy but it is more or less a watch shopping desert.
Scenario 5: If you are bargain hunting, I don’t have much for you. You need to look elsewhere. I had every intention of developing a scenario 5 but, regrettably, I had to abort most of my bargain hunting missions and Seiko searches. Even though my wife is a watch nerd, I could sense her getting fed up from time to time and wondering why we were looking at a set of 20 watches in the window of a camera store. As you will see in a minute my efficiency: cost savings: relationship stress math didn’t justify bargain hunting. The bargains are out there but they are inefficiently scattered in smaller shops that take a bit of work to get to. I am told to check out the vintage, pawn, and camera and pawn shops in Ueno and Shinigawa.
This is obviously not intended to be an exhaustive guide to watch shopping in Tokyo. I already mentioned I ignored the low end. I also largely ignored the Shinjuku area. I was there briefly to pick up a watch at Ishida Best (which has a super nice vintage selection downstairs and an extensive new watch department upstairs) but with little other reason to be in Shinjuku we found the Shinkuku mayhem too overwhelming and I spent enough time in Golden Gai on a prior trip to justify any sort of meaningful watch adventuring in Shinjuku on this trip.
CONCLUSION: The math (mostly) doesn’t work.
If you have an even marginally supportive spouse, watch shopping in Japan can be a great way to expand your horizons and get an education. Personally, I gained valuable knowledge that will help prevent future mistakes. For example, rotting tritium and ghost bezels look far crummier in real life than online. Vacheron Overseas are bigger and dopier in real life than online.
Watch shopping Tokyo is ultimately a math equation. Put a number on your time (T), the cost of a divorce lawyer (DL), the headache of a fight with your spouse (H), the opportunity cost of doing something else (SE), the exchange rate between the yen and your home currency (ER), the value of the education you will get from seeing a lot of watches (E), import duties (ID), penalties for not declaring at customs (C), and the cost of whatever you are going to have to buy for your spouse because you are going to have to buy them at least something to make up for dragging them around the city (X) then plug those numbers into the following equation:
Value = (E + ER)-(T- DL)-(ID + C)-(X)
If that number is positive, you are encouraged to burn your relationship and run all over Tokyo like a heroin addicted monkey trying to buy watches using Papago and a prayer.
If that is not your goal, maybe hit the pause button, combine watch shopping with something your spouse might enjoy (e.g. Scenario 3 or 4 above), focus on the education piece, and use that education to buy something when you get home.
When all is said and done, you might find that your time and money are better spent building a relationship with a watch dealer back home including CW watch shop or any number of grey market dealers specializing in your area of interest. Your time is also probably better spent building relationships in a private online forum with a Buy/Sell network such as the TGN crew or TRTS network.
There is no shortcut to watch nirvana and Tokyo is not a panacea. I get the feeling that after the pandemic, the rise of Chrono24, and everything else that happened in the watch world over the last half decade, the secret is out. in common with the online, used watch, platforms which seem to add more cost than value. Tokyo isn’t quite the watch shopping amusement park that some make it out to be.
Barring the favorable exchange rate and tax savings (which can be significant), and the eduction you can get from seeing a ton of watches with relatively little effort, Tokyo watch shopping might have more
The future of watch shopping will likely be grey market dealers who survive the downturn and members only groups built on privacy, limited access, discretion, and trust. That, however, is a story for a different time.
Acknowledgements
This series would not have been possible without the support of @kristinnicolemayer who was driven marginally nuts in the pursuit of whatever knowledge we gained in Tokyo. #gobetty #badassisbeautiful. Additional thanks go to several members of the TGN crew, including Ganesh and Ken, were helpful getting me started. Finally, thanks to the tips from the industry insiders who chose to remain anonymous. You know who you are.