Tokyo Flash

Mid-December I came upon a Japanese boutique watch company via the Geekologie site which goes by the name Tokyo Flash. The company's main product line centers around strange futuristic watches, most of which have a unique way of displaying the time. To see what I mean, just surf around their site for a minute.

So, after taking a good look around the site, I found a few watches I could probably afford and ended up settling with the Nekura Progression. The idea with this watch was that the minutes of the hour were shown digitally, as standard, but the hours were displayed with a progressive set of bars arranged in a circular fashion along the perimeter of the screen. One of the watch's other unique features was that you could change the display color, choosing from six different options.

To my disappointment though, when the watch arrived, a piece was missing, making it hard to strap on correctly, it was uncomfortable to wear, and the colors weren't bright, only staying lit for a couple seconds. In other words, it was nothing I was expecting it to be yet cost a small fortune for a watch (for me at least...around $100). To my dismay, I later found out that although the watch would be refunded, they weren't going to cover my shipping costs (back to fucking Japan!) and were going to charge me a restocking fee! I was pissed! Fortunately, I talked them out of the restocking fees, but I did have to pay return shipping.

So, lesson learned, I guess. Essentially I paid $25 to learn not to buy something online from a foreign country without having tried it first. Ugh.