The Japanese seem hell bent on devising new ways of telling the time. Countless experimental watches both novel and down right silly have been released over the years with an alternative to the traditional dial or digital approach to telling the time. Lots of them have you counting dots or lines, and doing some formula in your head to tell the time. I admit that many of them have looked pretty cool, I’d nay choose them as a device for chronometric measurement.

The two biggest purveyors of such novelty watches are Tokyo Flash and Tokyo Street. I doubt that the name similarity is a coincidence, but they are separate companies as far as I can tell. While most of these watches succeed in creating visual interest, few are particularly useful in my humble opinion. Once in a while they come out with something that I might actually use, and the Tokyo Street LEC Scope watch is one of them.

Looking at the watch you can see two perpendicular lines that intersect on a X/Y axis. The point of their intersection (changing each five minutes) tells you the time. One axis tells you the minutes, the other tells you the hours. Just follow the lines with your eyes and you can tell the time within five minute precision. Obviously this is not for everyone as a lot of us need a bit more precision when being on time.

The watch really excels in looks. The retro techie design looks like a prop our of a 1970-80s spy movie. Tokyo Street has a strong point when it comes to this, and I am amazed that the watch is a legible as it is. The sleekish off centered design and green (no idea if it does anything) target window just looks cool. Makes me want to launch a ICBM.

The display is red or green LED, actually lots of LEDs that make up the dial. Other than telling the time, functions also include a calendar. Price is pretty reasonable for the geektastic look at about $180.00.

See Tokyo Street and Tokyo Flash watches on eBay here.

See Tokyo watches on Amazon here. [phpbay]tokyo flash | tokyo street, num, “”, “”[/phpbay]