#12 White Tiger from the West (西方白虎)

D V N O

Four capital letters
Printed in gold
'Cause details make the girls sweat even more
while they're shaking their belt
No need to ask my name
to figure out how cool I am

This article features my little golden treasure, the Gold Defender Frogman. It also features Susan, who has also a beautiful treasure. She owns a funny Jinchen Knight Cruiser 4-stroke motorcycle.

I got this Gold Defender Frogman from Leon in the US in November 2004. It is my 2nd Gold Defender Frogman. When I got this one, I noticed this one has the URL of the Japanese G-Shock website printed on the band. It was ascent on my other, that I purchased 5 month earlier from Boris of Seiko5ers in Hong Kong. Probably this one is a Japan domestic model, while the version I got from Boris is the overseas model.
"How do I look?" "Very good. I must say, I'm amazed""I'm a very stylish girl". (Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961).
The Gold Defender series, released March 2002, combines street fashion with the ancient the spirits of the four Chines Constellations.
Every model features images of a spirit in gold accents (hence the name of the series). It is shown on the straps and the EL backlight.
The DW-056GM (the Azure Dragon from the East), DW-069GM (the Black tortoise intertwined with a snake from the North) and G-2300GM (Vermilion Phoenix of the South) are basically black models with gold accents.
The Frogman of this series, the GW-200GM-9JF is the eye catcher of the series. It represents the White Tiger from the West (西方白虎, also known as Byakko in Japan and, for Susan, Baekho in Korea).
The element white also represents the West. That's why the White tiger is the guardian from the West. The White Tiger also represents the Autumn season. It seems like a good watch for me as I am born in September. What gives a better as sitting in the back garden, enjoying the Indian summer with a beer in one hand, watching the red autumn sky as the sun sets.
The old Chinese believed the tiger was the king of the animals. The Legend tells that when a tiger is 500 years old, it's tail becomes white. The White Tiger must have been an old and wise animal.
The straps and the bezel of the Gold Defender Frogman has a special coating. It polarizes light, which gives the watch different color tones when viewed under different angles, varying from a greenish hue to gold.
It is similar to some metallic car paints. I think it's based on an optical phenomenon. The thickness of the layer is exact the wavelength (λ) of the desired color. When the viewing angle changes from 90º to another, the thickness changes, which also changes λ.The GW-200 is my favorite Frogman model. I like the Tough Solar feature, which reduces battery changes to a minimum. Also the capacity of the battery is enormous, so a full charged battery can make the watch run for many months. Since it has the Power Save function (display shut off after several hours not in use), it even runs longer on a full battery than the Raysman and the G-2300.
In the past liked the Frogman for it's size. A few years ago the size of a Frogman was huge compared to other watches. Nowadays in my country everybody wants to wear BIG watches. With BIG watches I mean that my Frogman in size looks somewhat average compared with those in size. Still I like the asymmetric design (Hi Merel!). It's also looking pretty thick. It makes the Frogman unique in the G-Shock line. Only the G-Lide GLX-100 and the Lungman have an asymmetric design too, but they don't look as good as the Frogman in my opinion.
Maybe I like dive watches. I already own an Orange Monster and love the look of a Tuna... Maybe I will buy a Russian submarine watch in the future. The kind with bars for the crystal, with the size of the palm of the hand. Oops, I forgot, it's 50 Gs.

" Idiot" ("The Idiots are Winning" 2006, James Holden)
Notice my giant Baby-G in the background.

The Gold Defender Frogman has a mat titanium screwback. The serial number reveals this Frogman is assembled in January 2002. My other Gold Defender Frogman is from December 2001.
The White Tiger is looking fierce and protective when the EL backlight is activated. It looks the West is well protected.
School's out. Time to show the Jincheng (after I heard many stories). Jincheng also makes motorcycles that look like the famous DAX model by Honda. Cool!
Thanks to Susan and Merel for helping with the photo's and the fun.

#11 Jason

Around 2001 and 2002 I was looking a lot over the auctions of eBay Germany. In Germany you could found loads of G-Shock auctions at that time of a lot ofor me interesting models.
I was not an expert on G-Shock, but I was always amazed to find another strange model. Often, out of curiosity, I place my bids.
I won quite some auctions this way and in almost all cases the sellers were nice enough to sent the watch to an address in the Netherlands. I can only remember that only once a seller refused.
The Euro wasn't introduced yet and you could get a great looking G-Shock in the DM20 - DM30.- range. If you really liked a great model, set a bid on DM45.- and you was sure to win the auction (well, in 95% of the cases). Note that when the Euro was introduced the Deutsche Mark was worth about €0.50. After the introduction of the Euro, the figures stayed the same, though with an € sign for it (so the prices did rise about 200%).
Somewhere in 2001 I saw this strange watch. I had seen the DW-002, DW-003 and DW-004 range in all their colors, but this was different. The yellow and red tones were so loud, it almost looked like a toy. Still it had a thermometer function, according the auction. I only knew the DW-6100 Thermometer model. I didn't have a DW-6100 at that time, I probably still hadn't won an auction of that model (probably one of those 5% of the lost auctions).I placed a bid, probably a higher one, as I was so curious. A week later I won the auction.I don't know exactly what my winning bid was, but I believe I had to pay around DM30.- (€14.-!). It looks real cheap now, but it was a fairly normal price at that time.
The EU banks didn't work together at those days and sending money to Germany via a bank was a relative expensive. Therefore I mostly sent cash to the seller. A friend of me has a east asian and antique furniture store in Middelburg, which is very popular by German tourists. Therefore he had quite some German currencies in his house. This saved me a lot of transaction costs at the exchange offices.The seller of this watch mailed me a very strange address in Wuppertal. Before I sent him the money, I asked how to read the address. It seemed that he live in a very modern suburb. It was divided in blocks, which were divided in blocks and so on, resulting in an address with a lot of roman and normal numbers.
You might ask why I did remember I bought this watch in Wuppertal. Well, I am a bit of train fanatic. Wupperal has since 1901 a very unique and modern type of transport, the "Wuppertal Schwebebahn", a suspended monorail. As a child I was amazed by watching pictures of this phenomenon. A good friend of me was last year in Wuppertal. He took a lot of photo's for me and I think I even showed them on my Japanese weblog once.Since everything went with "snail mail"I got the package almost two weeks later. Not that there is much improvement now. If a seller has no Paypal (it is slowly getting used in Germany now) a bank transaction takes 4 working days, which is exactly as fast as good old "snail mail". It's of course safer, though I never lost money in the mail.The watch looked like candy. The thermosensor ar the bottom looked a bit weird and the red eye was pretty colorful. The seller told me he bought the watch in Japan. Looking at the state of the watch it was probably never worn. When I had started G-Peopleland and had some contact with Japanese G-shock collectors, several pointed me that I owned a "Jason". It didn't say much to me, but it was the name for this watch given by Japanese collectors. It was highly sought actually. The yellow version seemed pretty rare, but actually I have not seen the black version on the market very much too and surely not for the price I paid for it.
It took years to find out where the name "Jason" came from. It was referred to Jason Voorhees, the main character in the series horror movies "Friday 13th". Jason Voorhees wears a hockey mask, that somewhat looks like the cover of the thermo sensor of the DW-001.
Though it looks like a toy, the 1994 had some nice features on board. Not only it had a thermometer function, it also could calculate the sun rise and sun set. Like the DW-6100 the DW-001 also has only a micro light.In 2008 HTML (a clothing brand that has strong connections with Kiks TYO) launched several G-Shock T-Shirts. One of them was a tribute to the DW-001 "Jason" model. It featured a print of one of the Friday 13th movie posters.
Other tribute shirts that HTML made were the DW-6400 Gundam and the DW-002 Bob Marley model.

#10 Military Inspired Mat black with red third Eye

The year couldn't have started better. Early January Reznor reported Casio developed a new series. The funny thing was that there was not yet one name for this series. The series were expected for release in February.The first name was Military Concept, but later the name "G-Force: Military Inspired" was given for this series. A little later the name was finally changed into Military Inspired series, rumors say because G-Force was a protected name. A bit strange in my view. G-Force is the term for the free-fall velocity that gives a certain body an acceleration of 9.81 meters per second squared here on earth. I never heard thatLorentz force is a protected name.A few days later (on January 20th) Kastu Higuchi-San announced the new series, though under another name. The Master of G models were released under the Men In Rusty Black (MIRB) series, the DW-6900MS and DW-5600MS were released as the Mat Black Red Eye (MBRE) series. A great addition to the line-up was given. Above the Military Concept models there was also a Riseman added to the line up.
I contacted Katsu-San if he was able to get the whole line up for me. Since the release was expected at the end of February 2009, it was a long wait of several weeks, but then I got both great and bad news. Katsu-San had gotten a compete series for me, but the Frogman isn't in this series. Due to a problem with silicon grease found on some backs of the MIRB Frogman, all Frogman were called back to the factory. The good thing was that all other 4 models were waiting to be shipped to me. Yesterday I was very lucky. I was about to go to the Zythos Beer Festival in Sint Niklaas in Belgium, while the van of the parcel service TNT was rushing to our house. The chauffeur saw me already standing next to the car in front of my house. I had no time to open the package, but at least I had it in my house waiting for me to come back.The festival was a big succes. I have even tasted the first gray beer in the world, which was very remarkable. I think I must try to get some bottles of this beer, but that's another story.The Dutch customs are unfortunately pretty catchy on parcels. Often the fees and duties are equal to the tax I have to pay. To spread the risk of a very big bill I always let my parcels come in parcels with maximal 2 watches. Special G-Shocks are already expensive enough for me.When I got home I took the package and carefully opened it. It seems that Casio has developed a new packaging box. It's a bit smaller than the big square boxes. That would make storing these boxes a lot easier I think.When I opened the boxes I saw the DW-6900MS and the Riseman looking at me. Immediately it occured to me the amber display of the DW-6900MS is very dark. It was getting evening and the display was getting a bit hard to read. On the other hand, the watch looked very deep back. The gray lettering on the display is not screaming bright. Also the red eye is not as bright as it looks on these photo's. It's actually pretty dark. The bezel has no paint in the letttering. A lot of people have tried to stealth their DW-6900's and other G's, but this one is stealth already. On the strap the module number, 1298, is printed in a military font. This emphasizes the Military Inspired look of this watch. The buckle and buttons is very cool. The metal parts are finished with a black coating, like on the Master Blue series.One thing that puzzels me is the EL backlight. It's blueish green. Actually I had hoped for an amber backlight.
The MIRB and MBRE models are not pretty cheap. Except for the Riseman the models are available in Japan and the US. I think soon the models will be available in East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore) too. It would be great if they were released in Europe too, but that's always a big question. The best prices at the moment are on www.g-shock.com if you live in the US or Canada. I got Friday a mail from Keith at tiktox, that they were expecting a small number of DW-6900-MS models, like this one. For other elsewhere try Seiya San and Katsu-San.