Oh and for the record, in regards to the 'what do they do' question, mine has a small hidden compartment for ... something? There was what looked like a dancing pickle on the front of the box mine came in, so the conjectures included condoms, as well as other illicit small packages.

Last summer I was working at Electric Works art gallery in San Francisco and found out about Haruo Suekichi's beautiful watches. My boss happened to be taking a trip to Japan, and it didn't take much convincing to get him to track down a few of these watches. He came back with four. I kept one, his fiancé kept one, and I think the gallery is still interesting in selling the other two. There's a picture of mine at the top of my blog right now (ablogfromabroad dot blogspot), if anyone wants to see. I think one of the two left is the same, but with Arabic (not Japanese) numerals.