Hideyuki Takano, the non-fiction author of "Frontier Meals" and "The Iraqi Water Margin," is a Pro Trek fan!

LIFE Celebrity Watch Hunting

2024.05.12

Casio

Celebrity Watch Hunting focuses on the watches worn by celebrities from a variety of genres. This time, we look at the Casio Pro Trek, the watch of choice for exploration by Hideyuki Takano, a popular non-fiction writer whose motto is "Go where no one has gone, do what no one has done, and write about it in an entertaining way."

Written by Yukako Numamoto
Text by Yukaco Numamoto
[Article published on January 12, 2024]

Hideyuki Takano, a frontier non-fiction writer who won the Naomi Uemura Adventure Award

I recently visited Iraqi Kurdistan and attended a friend's wedding reception wearing traditional Kurdish clothing I bought there. Some older guests asked me, "Arafat?" and "PLO?", but it wasn't combat uniform. There are still quite a few people dressed like this in the towns of Kurdistan. pic.twitter.com/wOe3pKVDs5

— Hideyuki Takano (@daruma1021) April 29, 2024

This photo was posted by Takano Hideyuki on X (formerly Twitter) on April 29, 2024. He attended a wedding reception wearing Kurdish traditional clothing purchased in Iraqi Kurdistan.

　Takano Hideyuki is a Waseda University graduate who joined the university's exploration club while he was there, and made his debut with "Chasing the Mysterious Monster, Mbembe," a collection of his expeditionary accounts. This work established the genre of highly entertaining non-fiction and garnered a great deal of attention.

　His work on inaccessible places around the world has earned him a reputation and has captured the hearts of many fans. In particular, in 2002, while researching "The Southwest Silk Road Vanishes into the Jungle," he left China without an exit stamp, crossed a guerrilla-controlled area in northern Myanmar without passing through any border checkpoints, and entered India, capturing the hearts of readers who aspire to become explorers. He also has an anecdote about how this led to him being blacklisted by the Immigration Bureau, making it impossible for him to enter India.

True to his motto, "Go where no one has gone, do what no one has done, and write about it in an entertaining way," Takano has not only visited places, but has also had a strong spirit of adventure in cultural exchange, eating gorilla meat, monkey jerky, and a mysterious monster fish raw. Many of Takano Hideyuki's books are chronologically traced expeditions, but he also has a book called "Frontier Food: It Looks Amazing, So I Tried It" which is a collection of food experiences alone.

　Hideyuki Takano is also a master of languages. He is fluent in more than 25 languages, including not only French and Spanish, but also Lingala, a language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa, and the language of the Wa people, an ethnic minority group found in Myanmar, China, and Thailand. He also has experience as a Japanese language instructor at Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

Hideyuki Takano's watch is a Casio Pro Trek.

It has now evolved into a waist bag that can be worn on the side of the waist. https://t.co/9bShFDmC65 pic.twitter.com/UYLr9TpOBP

— Hideyuki Takano (@daruma1021) December 14, 2023

You can also tell from the strap that it's a Pro Trek PRW3100.

　A photo posted by Hideyuki Takano on his Twitter account X (formerly Twitter) on April 29, 2024, shows what appears to be a Casio Pro Trek watch. The reference is presumed to be the PRW3100. It's a slim, full-fledged outdoor watch packed with features like Triple Sensor Ver. 3 and multi-band 6 radio-controlled solar.

　The Triple Sensor Ver.3 can measure altitude, air pressure, temperature, and direction. It will sound an alarm if there's a sudden drop or rise in air pressure, and it automatically detects the surrounding light and darkness, turning on the LED light when your wrist is tilted beyond a certain angle. It won't activate in bright places, reducing unnecessary power consumption. It also has a function to display the sunrise and sunset times for a specified date, which is useful when hiking or camping.

　Multi-Band 6 radio-controlled solar watches are useful for those who travel around the world like Takano Hideyuki. They convert even the slightest amount of light into power, ensuring stable operation of all functions, while also receiving standard radio waves from six stations around the world to automatically correct the time.

　As a feature suitable for explorers, the watch boasts a water resistance of 10 ATM, so it can be used without any problems even if it gets soaked during activities such as river trekking.The world time function can display the time in major cities around the world, including Kathmandu, Nepal.

　To make it easy to use the complex functions, icons are used for each function, allowing for intuitive operation. The large direct buttons can measure direction, air pressure, temperature, and altitude with a single push, and are non-slip, making them easy to operate.

　Many people like the outdoor design and wear outdoor watches in the city. This Pro Trek, which flies around the world with real explorer Hideyuki Takano, is a happy watch that is able to make the most of its inherent functions.

　The PRW3100 model introduced here is no longer in production, but its latest successor, the PRW-35, is a smaller, lighter model made from biomass plastic, and inherits the appeal of the PRW3100.