URUGA 42 Rubber Model [UG03-RWHNWH-SSD]

White on white is a hard thing to pull off in a watch. The URUGA 42 manages it because the steel between the dial and the strap is doing so much work.

MINASE closes this case with a clamping structure instead of a conventional bezel: four voluminously cut clasps, faceted on several planes, press the case and the sapphire crystal together in the way prongs hold a stone in a jewelry setting. Those facets are hand-polished by the Sallaz method, a Swiss-origin technique MINASE revived, which keeps each surface flat enough to mirror without distortion and each edge sharp where two of them meet. That band of light is what separates the white dial from the white strap.

The dial carries the horizontal gradation the line takes from the Minase River in Akita, and the white rubber strap makes this the brightest configuration MINASE offers in the URUGA 42. The steel case is 42.0 mm wide, 48.0 mm long including the lugs and 10.2 mm thick with the slightly curved crystal. Power comes from the self-winding KT7002, a MINASE-finished Swiss ETA 2892 and Sellita SW300 base, with a date.

Water resistance is 5 atm, for weather rather than swimming. It reads as a warm-weather watch without becoming a novelty.

Perfect for: white rubber strap watches, monochrome watch collectors, summer automatic watch shoppers.