how i got my "G"

okay, so recently, i've been obsessed with G Shock watches. it all started when i was watching the drama SP Hero. in the SP, the main character was sporting a G Shock. and because i thought it would be cool to have the exact same watch, i went online and started looking for it.

i was thinking about at the beginning that it would be rather easy. i didn't know too much about G Shocks, i thought that they are more of a regular watch and that the watch was going to be a rather easy find.

oh, how wrong I was.

google was not a great help to me at first since i did not know the model of this particular G Shock, i was really looking picture by picture. i first read about the watch from a Singapore blog site that talked about the Drama SP Hero and the watch that was featured in there.

it was called the DW5600FS-3JF.

okay, so on with the search. this was the hard part. neither ebay or amazon had this particular model. why was this? i wondered....

turns out to be a Japan-only model. okay, fair enough. logged on to the Japanese version of yahoo and did a search for it. found it!!!! only the sellers ONLY shipped inside Japan and not internationally. what a bummer. i needed help. since non of my friends were into G Shocks, the only thing that i was left with was the message boards. i was recently watching a Japanese drama called "densha otaku" about a man who was a hardcore anime and manga fan looking for relationship advice from an online message forum.

i was looking for a good forum and stumbled on to www.watchuseek.com. they had a bunch of sub forums dedicated to different brands of watches. and i saw the G Shock board. registered and log on and created a thread about it on the WTB (want to buy) board. nothing. no replies, nothing. so i guess no one was selling this baby.

okay, on to the main G Shock forum. made a thread about it. within a matter of hours, i can a few replies. turns out that this sucker is only found in Japan and that finding one out side of Japan was near impossible. the forum members suggested me to a website.

http://www.seiyajapan.com/ this was the first website where i attempted to try and obtain my watch. seiya-san basically sells Japan only models and ships them internationally. so i sent in a request form for this watch.

seiya-san got back to me within 2 days i believe which is pretty quick. the watch was located and the price after everything was about 320.00. i told him that i was interested about purchasing and waiting for a response. perhaps it was the time difference but seiya-san replied to me 2 days later that the watch has already been sold.

big, fat, bummer!!!!

okay. so what was next?

back at watchuseek.com, the forum members suggested that i go with a third party agency. they basically buy the items for you in Japan and ship it out internationally. the draw back is that they have bank fees and commission fees. but they are able to get it for me. at this time, i really wanted the damn watch. so i went looking for third party agencies.

the members from the board suggested http://www.fromjapan.co.jp/en/. so i checked them out. prices are kinda high. so i went with a different route. www.japan-auction-agency.com. this site i believe is a bit cheaper than fromjapan.co.jp.en. so i went with them instead.

they have really good communication and they are pretty fast. they open at 7:00am their time in Japan, which is around 4:00pm US pacific standard time. and they replied back my questions at around 4:30 to 5:00pm. which is good service. so i placed a bid using their system.

finally, the auction ended and i got my my watch, and after everything, the watch came out to be around 275.00USD. not bad. and i got my watch in about 5 business days.

so there, my watch, DW5600FS-3JF in my hands. it was a long wait and a long ass search but i got my watch.

i gotta give it up from Vintage, Mansrow, Jabsa, Seamaster73, and of course Seiya-san. even though Seiya-san couldn't get the watch, he was still very nice and helpful with his e-mails. and thanks for your comment Sjors!

looking forward to my next purchase.

until then, late!!