Close your eyes. Take a breath. I want to tell you a story about time. Not the kind that you can feel slipping through your fingers, or the kind you wish away while stuck in daily drudgery, but the kind you can hold in your hand. The kind of time that breathes with you after a long hike, or a thrilling ride on a motorbike. The kind that doesn’t flee, but breathes, ebbs and flows with you as you hold a loved one, or teach your child to ride their first bicycle. Those moments where time slows down, and time isn’t spent or burned but cherished.

I’m opening a small shop called Clipper St. Clair, focused on Japanese timepieces – elegant machines that marry art, precision and innovation, engineering and tradition.

In 1969, while America raced to put a man on the moon, Japan pursued an equally ambitious goal: putting quartz precision into a wristwatch. Eleven years earlier, Seiko had developed a quartz clock for Japanese broadcasting stations—a behemoth the size of a large locker. Their audacious mission was to shrink this room-filling technology by 1/300,000th of its original size and make it affordable for everyday consumers. When Seiko released the Astron on Christmas Day 1969, their achievement didn’t just coincide with the space age—it ignited both a revolution and an evolution in timekeeping that would forever change the way time is kept.

The quartz movement made timekeeping ubiquitous. It allowed everyone to have a timepiece. Many of us remember our first toy watches, often brightly colored things received freely in a McDonald’s Happy Meal, or given by a relative after a trip to a theme park. Many of us remember having a wristwatch before we understood the significance of time or necessity of punctuality. We have clocks on our phones, on our wrists, in our dashboards, on our laptops, on our walls, and this in part is largely due to the innovation brought forward with the quartz movement.

Today if you want a watch, you can buy piles of mass produced watches by the pound on eBay and other sites. Most people probably have 5 or 6 time keeping devices on or near them at all times. So why would I dare to start a watch shop today?

One reason is because most watches are garbage. There are some, which are hard to find, that bring more to the table than just basic time keeping. They infuse our days with style, and remind us of a time when well made things were prized rather than used for a time and then thrown away.

Another is that we can change the way we feel, and the way we speak to the world just by changing our wristwatch.

A third, is that modern watches are more computer than watch, inundate us with buzzes and pings, steal our data, and interrupt our days constantly with meaningless updates.

Why pre-owned watches? As I said there are buckets of watches for sale across the internet. I’ve come across them in thrift stores, antique stores as well. These watches will just end up in the landfill, and some of them sadly belong there. There is no need to continue mass producing watches. Lost in the mess of these mall and fashion watches are real gems that can be recovered, renewed and continue to spark joy in the lives of their owners. Solar technology like Eco-drive, pioneered by Japanese watchmaker Citizen, uses a capacitor instead of a battery, and works for a decade or more before needing a replacement capacitor. This kind of technology can keep not only watches but also batteries and their toxic components out of the landfill.

Finally, why Japanese watches? Swiss watches are absolutely fine, they’re superlative, actually. They’re also the type of watch you wear to a regatta, Formula 1 race, or to special events like a wedding, a business dinner, or other formal black tie events.

Many watches spend their entire lives in a drawer, at Clipper St. Clair we want you to wear the one you buy from us.

I’ll tell you why I love Japanese watches.

The Japanese didn’t stop at quartz. They perfected it.

While the rest of the world was still celebrating their breakthrough in 1969, Japanese engineers were already three moves ahead. Today’s quartz movements don’t just keep time—they define it. Some achieve accuracy that rivals atomic clocks, turning your wrist into a precision instrument that would make NASA engineers weep with envy.

But precision was just the beginning. Japanese innovation brought us radio-controlled watches that sync with atomic time signals, and satellite timekeeping that connects your wrist to the cosmos itself. They took the romance of mechanical movements and made them better—Spring Drive technology marries the soul of automatic watchmaking with quartz accuracy, while Magic Lever innovations reduced costs without sacrificing the craft.

The result? Watches that don’t just survive—they endure.

These timepieces embody something deeper than mere functionality. They possess that unmistakable Japanese design aesthetic—the same disciplined beauty found in a katana’s edge or a superbike’s silhouette. Every curve, every surface speaks to ものづくり or, monozukuri— a word that is purely Japanese. Practitioners believe it cannot truly be understood by foreigners. While we may not have the cultural concepts to fully understand it, we can inherently appreciate it.

Monozukuri is not a process. It is the art and mindset of making things. It is not about making them cheaply or good enough. It is the art of making things in the Japanese method. It involves among other things efficiency, masterful craftsmanship, traditional design philosophy and the pursuit of perfection through continuous improvement. In a way, Monozukuri is a conversation with the past about the future.

This isn’t about manufacturing. It’s about philosophy made tangible. It’s about the relentless pursuit of perfection that turns everyday objects into instruments of excellence. When you wear a Japanese watch, you’re not just checking the time—you’re carrying centuries of craftsmanship on your wrist.

Japanese watches aren’t cheap, they’re affordable and durable but also have great designs that allow you to wear it at the office, by the lake, on the boat, and even in a board room.

Most people don’t own a Swiss watch, but most of us own some sort of smartwatch. These devices are soulless designs mass produced and sold for a premium despite the fact that these devices pay for themselves and then some through data collection and app ecosystem purchases. These devices drain our attention span, overwhelm our senses with constant pings, vibrations and notifications we receive simultaneously on our phones. Today’s watch replacements are dystopian imaginations, creating a world where we are always connected to the hive mind, always tracked, always spied upon and always pulled away from the moments that matter. One thing I credit the smartwatch for is getting people back into the habit of wearing a watch. If you still wear a smart watch, we’d encourage you to try one of ours as a reprieve from the constant awareness and overstimulation that comes with a smartwatch.

I have learned some things in my life, one being that some minutes count more than others. With a Japanese made time keeping machine on your wrist you will be on time for all of them, and once there — you won’t miss a thing.