Seiko, as many of us know, is a Japanese company, so where are their movements made? Well, some of them are made in Japan, but not all of them. In fact, a lot of their movements come out of their Malaysia factory! The easiest way you can tell is that the Malaysia factory movement have no country of origin present on the rotor, while the ones that come from Japan have JAPAN in big letters on the rotor. The Malaysia factory movements are the ones you'll typically see sold across the internet and even here at AJuiceT, but earlier this year I decided that I wanted to see JAPAN on the rotor of some of my watches, so splurged for some Japanese Factory NH34s.
After having the Japan Factory NH34s in hand, and putting them to the timegrapher to test before builds, I noticed that they really weren't that much different than the Malaysia factory ones, but I didn't necessarily keep track of anything. So, for science, I put it to the test and spend about a half hour testing 10 total movements -- 5 from the Japan Factory and 5 from the Malaysia factory to see what the difference was.