Okaya City Nagano watch

I've blogged all sorts of commemorative/ promotional watches on my blog so far, but I think this is the first which is for a city!

This watch is made for a place called Okaya City, which is a small city in the Nagano Prefecture (county) in Japan on the banks of Lake Suwa. The city was founded in 1936 is in the centre of the prefecture and has a population of just over 50,000. After WWII, the city established itself as a place for high precision manufacture, and is now home to Seiko Epson and Olympus.

The watch is a standard round case analogue watch with a 3 hand dial design. The face features a picture of a colourfully dressed person holding drumsticks with the Okaya City name on their drum. In the background, the picture has what looks like bells, trees, and maybe a city landmark.

The back has the city name engraved into it, as well as the usual watch information (water resistant, stainless steel and base metal).

The watch is made by Seiko (which is appropriate as they have a base there), and is based around the V701 quartz module (which inside is revealed to be a Shiojiri V70C). It was manufactured in a year ending in a 5, so could be 1985 for the 50th anniversary of the city in 1986, or 2005 for the 40th anniversary of the twinning with Mount Pleasant, Michigan, US, or something completely different. My guess for the watch style is that it's an 80s watch, but possibly 90s.

Alba Aqua Gear V701 Purple

It's a very early post today as the rest of the day will be rather busy taking photos.

The watch I've chosen today is by the Seiko brand Alba, and was released sometime around 1994. It is part of their Aqua Gear line of watches, which were a range of water resistant fashion watches - this one is 20 bar resistant (approx 200m). Alba had several Gear lines of watches including Hot Gear, Field Gear, and Aqua Gear (examples from all of these can be found elsewhere on my blog).

The watch is a 3 hand dial movement using a V701 quartz module (the full model number is V701-1Y20), with a crown at the 4 o'clock position. It has a rotating bezel, but this is mainly for decorative purposes. The entire watch face glows in the dark for easy night use (- I've tried to get a picture, but it's a little dark).

It has a very colourful design in purple, turquoise, yellow, orange and white, so is pretty noticeable. The strap is also printed with the Aqua Gear name (and has a part number of FAV4FB 20).

The catalogue number was APBT075, and it was originally sold for 9,000 yen.

Seiko Alba Field Gear V701 Thermo and Lens

Today's watch is definitely designed for the outdoors enthusiasts.

It was released under the Seiko Alba brand, in a line they called Field Gear. Most of the Field Gear watches have a rugged feel to them, but only this model was designed to help in the great outdoors!

The watch itself is a standard 3-hand dial watch based on the Seiko V701 module. It has a strong woven strap, fastened with velcro with size adjustment. What sets it apart from the other watches is the additional functions built into the case.

The first item is the thermometer dial, which I guess uses a bi-metallic strip which coils and uncoils with temperature.

The second item is maybe noticeable in that the watch face looks a little magnified. When you open the lid, the magnifying lens stays on the lid, and could be used for either starting fires, or examining things.

The final item is the signal mirror which is hidden under the lid. If you get lost or stranded on an island, you can use this to reflect the sun to attract passing aircraft or boats, (or just annoy cats if you don't venture too much into the wilderness).

Unusually for a Seiko, there is no model number on the back, but from the catalogue I know it is V701-1Y9-2L9. The catalogue number is APBT093, and it was sold for 11,000 yen.

The watch originally came out in the early /mid 90s (1996 or earlier), but had stopped by 1999.

Seiko Alba Neatnik V701 Aluminum H.A.O.C

The Seiko Alba range reached it's 20th anniversary in 1999.
This year, also saw the release of the first models of the Neatnik range. The early models all had small dials in an aluminium case, with the text Aluminum H.A.O.C on the front. The H.A.O.C stands for hard anodic oxidation coatings, and refers to a method of preparing the Aluminum case involving a low temperature acid treatment.
The watch has a 3-hand dial using a V701 module. This module is also used in quite a few different styles of Alba watch with small dials.
The back of the watch also has the letters KMN-MNJ-SGT, but I don't know what they mean.
The full model number is V701-2G40 and this watch was was made in 1998, but not released until 1999. The catalogue number is AMXT003, and cost 12,000yen when released in 1999.