Editor’s note:

Although the Portuguese arrived sooner, the only foreigners allowed to live in Japan for almost 200 years were the Dutch. Known to the Japanese as the Kōmō, or Red Hairs, Dutch traders ran import/export businesses from the island of Dejima in Nagasaki harbor from 1638. Goods they exported to Europe, and stories they told during visits home, provided the Western world a window into Japan.

A Dutchman called Sjors (not his real name) continues the tradition. Although not the first to write about Casio G-Shocks on the Internet, in the past few years he introduced many outside Japan to the world of G-Shock collecting. The founder of G-Peopleland.com, and along with Ernie Romers the founder/head moderator of the popular Watchuseek G-Shock Forum — Sjors has a personal collection of more than 300 G-Shocks. We at GMT+9 hope you enjoy this installment in our continuing series of interviews with key players in the online Japanese watch community.

Where were you born (city name) and where do you live/work now?

I was born September 16, 1966, in Vlissingen, the Netherlands. English speaking people know it better as Flushing. It’s a harbor city with a big shipyard called The Schelde. My father was a chief in the quality department, and in that capacity he once visited Tokyo to learn more about Japanese quality control.

I live in Middelburg, which is the Zeeland Province capital, where I also work as an assistant chemistry teacher. This means I work a lot with 15–20year-old students conducting class experiments and individual experiments. It’s quite fun, and I can share a lot of knowledge of my study of clinical chemistry.

My real name isn’t Sjors, but I would like my real name secret for privacy reasons. I have been together with my girlfriend for about 17 years now, and have a son, Bram, who is almost seven years old.

Can you remember your first watch? If so, how old were you and what kind was it?

Yes I can. It was a child’s watch, which I got for my birthday when I was in second grade, junior school, so it was for my seventh birthday. It was bought in a respectable jewelery store, so it was probably of a good brand. It had a blue dial that had different shades when the light played on it. The ultimate child’s watch, but it was hand winding. It lasted a few days. After that I got a watch that stayed with me for a long, long time. I don’t know if it had a brand name, but it was quiet expensive around that time, and it was digital, with a liquid crystal display, a complete novum here at that time. Probably no surprise that it showed time, the date, and the seconds. It also had a micro light, which I played with as a kid at night in bed under the blankets. I worn this watch more than 10 years.

How did you first get interested in Casio G-Shocks, and what was your first G-Shock?

There was in my hometown a jewelry store that had G-Shock display on the street. On the side there was a big G, so it worked for years as a big magnet. Many times I stared at all those models, but they were too expensive for me. The prices started at 225 Dutch Guilders, around €100 now ($135 USD). That was a lot of money at the end of the ’90s, and I didn’t have a good paying job then. Also, my scratched and beat up Timex wouldn’t give up.

Sometime in the year 2000, I believe it was Queen’s Day (April 30th), my Timex went dead. The next day I went to the store in Vlissingen and tried on two G-Shocks. It was a tough decision. The DW-003 G-LIDE was very comfortable, but very big. The DW-004 looked more decent. After a few times trying, I chose the DW-004. A few weeks later, I bought the DW-003 G-LIDE too. I also found a Tough Label BPM Counter, and a Gaussman, so a small collection was formed within a few months.

How many G-Shocks do you have in your collection?

Do you really want to know? . . . I checked my database yesterday . . . 362.

What is more important with G-Shocks, a cool design, or useful functions? If a G-Shock doesn’t have a certain function, say a countdown timer mode, is it a serious flaw?

The count down timer is for me a very important function. In the laboratory, it’s an often-used feature. Other functions can be cool, but are not always important. I like the Codename Cipher for instance, the Morse Code Translator is a very cool feature, but when do you ever use it . . .

Can a G-Shock be “too big”?

I think not. I like the DW-6700, which is about the biggest G-Shock I know of. I also have some barometric altimeters that are even bigger.

You are Web pioneer, one of the first to make a popular English-language website about G-Shocks. You introduced many to how cool they are. You were probably the first to start a G-Shock forum for English speakers. Others have tried to compete with you by starting G-Shock forums, but nobody has been able to dethrone your No. 1 status. Regarding your forum, how many visitors do you get per day?

Actually, a friend and a colleague both repeatedly encouraged me to make a website about my G-Shocks at the beginning of 2003. The homepage and format was actually written by my friend Bleephead. My current hosting address was suggested by my colleague Paul D. I just took it over since I had no experience in building websites or HTML. At first I got a lot of complaints from people getting sick of the colors I used. It’s still is a colorful website, because I find that G-Shock is a colorful brand, but I think it’s a bit more in balance now. (Click on the banner below to visit G-Peopleland.)

One of the things I wanted in my website was a space where I could show I wasn’t the only one wearing and collecting G-Shocks, because some of my friends thought it was a ridiculous hobby. I knew some students and colleagues who wore a Baby-G or a G-Shock, so that’s how the G-People section was introduced. Now I get pictures from everywhere, from time-to-time, of people who want to be included with the G-People. I recently added two G-People with a real G-Shock lifestyle, Otto, a lifeguard and sea fisher, and Gerald, a sled dog racer.

I have no idea how many visitors we have per day on the G-Shock Forum, but my website, G-Pepleland, has at the moment an avarage of 120 visitors a day. Besides the G-Forum, I have a lot of contacts via my website. I think I get one or two e-mails with questions every day. Some stories can be emotional. A few days ago someone’s DW-6900 bezel broke after 12 years. It was a gift of his grandma, who passed away. Luckily Keith from Tiktox could still get the bezels. Also today, a sad story from Germany about a broken DW-8200 Frogman watchband . . . He only speaks and writes German, which is a dilemma in helping him.

Actually, the G-Shock Forum was started by incident. I had some contacts on Japanese G-Shock forums. In search of more information, I stumbled upon a post on Watchuseek (WUS). I believe it was Ron Engels, a fellow Dutchman, who posted a thread about my website. It was in August 2003, and I was about to go on vacation. Ernie Romers (WUS owner) asked me if I saw potential in a G-Shock forum. I had never seen English speaking people interested in G-Shocks, so I actually had my doubts. Ernie covinced me to start it, with me as moderator. Since I never visited fora, I even didn’t know what a moderator was . . . To my big surprise, there were quite a lot pros (who posted) when I returned from vacation.

The G-Shock Forum went through the usual forum growing pains, posts by spammers, flames, trolls, but you’ve now built a steady community with a spirit of goodwill. How did you make that transition?

Trolls and spamming will always exist, but on WUS we are constantly on guard for this. We have a team of moderators. Some of them can moderate over all forums (WUS has many forums, a Breitling watch forum, an Omega forum, and so on) to remove spam and troll posts. Also, active members can report about those kinds of posts, which are forwarded to the moderators, and Ernie Romers. Since this system was launched, it has proven successful.

We as a moderator team have had a lot of experience over time with flames. When the forum started I was a complete newbie, but people were nice to each other. After things went really wrong (I still remember, it was on the most important children’s feast of the year, on December 5th), we had a very rough time. At one point I thought the only option was to pull the plug on G-Peopleland. I got really nasty e-mails from people I never though could be that way, but I also got great backup from fans. Actually, G-Peopleland also has quiet a group of fans that contact me when I have done something they find interesting, or like when I have a birthday. I got a lot of help from my fellow moderators, and specially Alan (Tribe125), and very tough decisions had to be made. I think it’s mostly thanks to him that the G-Shock Forum, at this moment, is a good informative forum where you can talk seriously about G-Shock’s. But we also have a great time, and members have respect for each other no matter if you are new or if you have been hanging around for years . . .

What are your plans for the future of the G-Shock Forum and G-Peopleland?

We have a nice group of regular posting members now and it’s actually one of the busiest forums on WUS! I’m very glad the way the forum runs now. In the future, I hope we can still be a great place where G-Shock enthusiasts can hang out, where you can read the latest scoops, get help and advice, and it will be a big accessible public place with loads of information.

Next year G-Peopleland will exist five years. I’m thinking of designing a five years anniversary t-shirt, but then I should stop buying G-Shocks for a while. G-Peopleland is a hobby website that’s a little out of hand (over 600 pages!), and I pay for all bandwidth traffic myself, since I don’t want commercial banners.

You write for a music magazine?

I have written for a provincial pop music magazine called NOOT (NOTE). I interviewed young upcoming bands, wrote CD reviews, and I have done a great series about local studios.

Have you ever visited Japan, and if not, do you plan to?

I would like to, but then I think about the size of the country, and the language barrier. I can speak and read Dutch, English, German and a little French if needed, but Japanese is very different. I would like to meet some people, like Seiya-san, Katsu-san, Divefrogger, Murphy, Yachtrays (aka Sailboat bat) and Risefreak (Yamazaru-san), but they live all over Japan.

For the final question: G-Shocks seem to evolve each decade. They had a certain style in the 1980s, changed in the ’90s, and continue to develop this decade. Are you happy with the direction G-Shocks have taken from the year 2000–2007? If so, why? If not, why?

At first I wasn’t so amused with the early ’80s G-Shocks. When I started, I had also no idea about those. I don’t know how, but I met Casionerd, a specialist on the first DW-5X00C models, and got quiet interested. It was still the history of the G-Shock. When I saw DW-5500C for the first time, I fell in love with it. I’m so glad Casio re-released the DW-5500, as the G-5500 and GW-5500. When I got a DW-5200C from a good friend in Chicago, it became a very special watch for me.

My initial love goes to the mid- and late-’90s models, like DW-6900, DW-002, DW-003 and DW-004. Actually, I had a hard confrontation with a DW-6600, so I don’t wear this model, because I don’t want to be reminded how I smacked with my face on the street from a height of about two meters (six feet). The watch survived the smack, by the way, that must have been around seventy-five kilometers per hour against a windshield!

Around 2000, indeed there was another change. I didn’t like all models, but the GW-200 Frogman is my favorite Frogman model. It took some time to get used to the Cockpit models, but when I was in Belgium in 2003, I saw a German tourist wearing a G-510D, which looked very cool in real life. I actually own the first GW-300 Waveceptor released for the European market. I knew a retailer with very good connections with Casio Europe. Unfortunately, they broke up. Still, I wasn’t too fond of the first Waveceptor models. I was glad the GW-9000 was released. The first good looking Waveceptor model.

I also love the recent Mudman and Gulfman models. It’s a bit a pity not many really big models are introduced. I recently heard that the Dawn Black Frogman would be the last of the GW-200 series. Although I have heard this before, I’m now afraid this rumor is real. I hope Casio will produce a worthy successor. At the moment there is a rumor on Japanese blogs that the DW-001 Jason will be re-released. Well, I’m curious if those rumors are true. I think we can expect more surprises from Casio in the future. In my opinion, the end of the wrist watch is not in sight. Actually, I see more and more young people wearing watches again, and young people are the future.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Casio, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.