Hodinkee
Inside The Manufacture: A Visit To Casio's Yamagata Factory
Experiencing a typhoon was not what I had on my bingo card for my first visit to Japan. But it was June, the start of the rainy season in Japan, when I hopped on a plane from New York to Tokyo on my way to visit Casio for the first time. Switching my phone off Airplane Mode right after landing quickly inundated my notifications with different alerts that the following day would be filled with heavy winds and massive rainfall. The following day’s visit to Casio Yamagata, as it turns out, would be cancelled thanks to tropical storm Jangmi—there was no way a bullet train would be running in a storm like this. Luckily, after a day of massive rainfall and my fill of multiple bowls of ramen inside Tokyo Station, the storm subsided, giving me the green light to make the journey to Yamagata Prefecture after all. Yamagata Prefecture, more specifically the city of Higashine, is about four hundred kilometers north of Tokyo and roughly three hours by Shinkansen. It’s where Casio has its “mother factory,” very aptly named Yamagata Casio. While most of Casio’s high-volume production is achieved abroad, in countries like China and Thailand, Yamagata Casio functions as the brain of the whole operation and is responsible for any of the watches made in Japan. Casio’s industrial factory stands in stark contrast to what Higashine is best known for—fruit. Yes, stepping out of the bullet train at Higashine Sakuranbo station, you’re immediately surrounded by fruit trees and bou...
