No date, no problems
The Islander ISL-68 with its fully lumed Great Wave off Kanagawa dial is the perfect watch to wear on the beachfront during a lazy summer evening. It's also pretty good when it's about to rain, like now.
The dial is taking the self imposed no-date challenge to new heights since it's not only lacking a date windows but indices as well. It has a 12 hour bezel instead, which can also rotate, although I'm not exactly sure if it's really useful when it provides the only visible markers for the hours.
It still does the job of telling the time and I personally never had any problems with reading the time at a glance.
The Islander is Marc's interpretation of a mini-turtle, but is not based exactly on Seiko's own mini-turtle. Instead it's more like taking a full size turtle, including the 4:30 crown, and shrinking it down to 40mm in diameter.
It's also a fatty. the case is thick and the crystal is domed, creating a top heavy watch paired to a massive bracelet. It's not the best experience to be honest, but I still like the ISL-68 because of the dial, the lazy summer evening vibes, and also because I always wanted a smaller turtle but the bad people at Seiko never gave me what I really wanted.
I'm a big fan of watches that are interesting because they are either unique, have interesting features, well designed or simply offer a great value for their price.