July 5, 2016
A chance to travel should never be missed. At Vishawatch, every destination we head to becomes an exploration of the best whiskies and watch boutiques that city has to offer. Our recent travels to Shanghai and Tokyo were no different.
A couple of hours after touchdown in Shanghai, we couldn’t wait to start exploring the city. While we didn’t find anything extraordinary when it came to whiskies, we did discover the Shanghai Watch Company. With around 30 stores all across the city, we came across their boutique in Xintindi.
They say there is a lot of sophistication in simplicity so when we saw the Shanghai Watch Company’s natty window display, our curiosity was piqued. On introducing ourselves to the store manager, William, we were walked through the entire range of watches, all of which had clean elegant design. Even their heavier designs were uncomplicated compared to some of the watches we find out there today. We entered the boutique curious and left as fans!
Our next stop was the oldest watch store in Shanghai – Heng Dali. With two of their stores located on Nanjing Road, we headed to the larger store that had one thing unique to them. No matter what watch brand you wear, they’d fix it for you. We had a Harry Winston that needed to be tinkered with and even though they weren’t selling the brand, they took the watch and got it fixed in just an hour! What we really loved about the space we visited was that each watch brand had a separate dedicated section. It was like a mini mall just for watches and rest assured, we were in heaven.
Our next stop was Tokyo and surprise surprise…we didn’t find a lot of watches. But their whiskies more than made up for that. Starting from the airport, we saw some of the best whiskies on display. And the Japanese’s love for whisky didn’t end there.
Every mall we went to had a small section reserved exclusively for whiskies and some of the displays for the whisky were quite grand! With a mix of Japanese and international whiskies from around the world so easily available, we couldn’t help but indulge a little.
We did have one mission in mind during our stay there. To find a bottle of Yamazaki. But as it turned out, it was rarer to find in stock than a black diamond! However, we couldn’t hold that grudge against the Japanese who had world-class whiskies available even at their 7x11s! For us at Vishawatch, travelling to Shanghai and Tokyo was just the beginning of an exploration of watches, whiskies and the finer things in life all around the world. So join us on this journey and sign up for our newsletter.