What Is The Best Wetsuits?
Posted on June 20, 2008 - Filed Under Recreation and Sports
If you really want to get the best wetsuits, you need to buy Japanese wetsuits.
What is the difference between Japanese and others?
1. In Japan , most of surfers buy custom made wetsuit so wetsuits fit perfectly. (There are more stress from the parts that don’t fit your body perfectly)
2. In Japan , they use only the top materials. There are so many kinds of materials to choose from.
Japanese are well known for innovation in both material and design in wetsuits. Wetsuits companies use new materials almost every year. There are so many kinds of materials used in Japan . So it is hard even for Japanese to know what the best materials are.
Mr. Yutaka Nakamura, from e5star Wetsuits, is one of the best wetsuits craftsman said:
“It is very popular to use plush materials for Japanese winter suit. It is warm and very soft, however it doesn’t last long (about 1 year) from my 27 years experience. ‘Super-Nestle’ is the best materials today. ‘Super-Nestle’ has very good 360 flex, very warm, very strong and also dries fast. ‘Super-Nestle’ is a very expensive material so usually wetsuits companies use it in only a few parts.”
3. Did you know that in Japan most famous International brands make 2 kinds of wetsuits, one for the Japanese market and one for rest of the world? The Japanese version is made by Japanese craftsmen using Japanese materials. The other version, for international market, is made in Thailand and China . They look similar but the quality is very different.
Top quality Japanese wetsuits do not employ ’sealed seams’ or ‘Fluid Seam Weld’ (Aqua seal). Though some people think this is the latest technology, it could not be further from the truth. Those techniques were in fact employed to cover up unskilled craftsman’s needle work. Sure, sealed parts are very strong but they are tight as they offer less flex and also from sealed areas are more prone to damage. So in what way is the Japanese technique superior? Instead, they use what is known as “Sukui-nui” - a special sewing technique.
It is common to use ‘3D Cut’. This ‘3D’ cutting make wetsuits conform better to the shape of our bodies. Latest 3D Cut technology is amazing, it allows for perfect fitting even awkward places like under arms. Other international wetsuits are still designed in 2D.
You can probably go at least 1mm thinner if you wear Japanese wetsuits. (I used to wear 4/3, 5&6mm before I start using Japanese 3mm*and even warmer) It retails around $1200 in Japan . (For very good winter wetsuit) Is it crazy? May be. Only I can say Japanese do not buy overseas wetsuits. Once people tried good wetsuits it is really hard to go back.
For this article I talked to Mr.Nakamura who is the top wetsuits craftsman. He recently started his own brand which is called ‘e5star wetsuits’. He wants not just Japanese people to benefit from top wetsuit designs, so we start to sell these wetsuits to outside markets. He really wanted to make the No.1 wetsuit, regardless of how much it costs to make them!! With the No.1 wetsuit the shape will not change after each year. We have tested it and tried it for so many years. Also, e5star uses ‘Super Nestle’ for all the parts.
Please check our website!
Tags: bodyboard, best, good, surf, surfing, the best, wetsuit
Related Posts
Comments
One Response to “What Is The Best Wetsuits?”
Leave a Reply
[…] [Technorati] Tag results for surfing wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIf you really want to get the best wetsuits, you need to buy Japanese wetsuits. What is the difference between Japanese and others? 1. In Japan , most of surfers buy custom made wetsuit so wetsuits fit perfectly. (There are more stress from the parts that don’t fit your body perfectly) 2. In Japan , they use only […] […]