I had a trip to Scottsdale Arizona this week. I arrived on Sunday. I am usually pretty good at quickly adjusting to timezones and avoiding jet lag but this trip was not the case. I went to sleep at 11:30pm on Sunday night and woke up at midnight. I was awake until 7am. I tried everything to fall back asleep; counting 1-500, 500-1, laying in the dark, organizing my iPhone apps, showering, and watching TV. This set the tone for the rest of the week where every night was full of broken sleep. I am fully up to date on my infomercials now. If anyone is fighting acne, looking for financial freedom, tired of steak knifes that cannot cut soda cans and shoes or looking for the next product from Ronco and needs advice - let me know!

Todays' Configuration: Leica M9-P, Leica M Monochrom, Summilux 21mm f/1.4, Summilux 35mm f/1.4, Summicron 50mm f/2.0, Noctilux 50mm f/0.95, and Konica Hexanon 60mm f/1.2

Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale Arizona

The grounds of The Phoenician where I was staying were beautiful. I have very little free time and unfortunately jet lag really messed up my sleep patterns and I was typically asleep at the only time I had to go shooting.

I went to Shibuya the other day to deposit a few checks at my bank. It will take...wait for it...22 days for the check to clear. Let me be specific it will take 22 (twenty two) business days to clear. That's more than 5 weeks. Their reaction was similar to what I would expect from a 7-11 convenience store clerk if I tried to pay with Bearer Bonds.

No idea what was going on here... Interestingly Darth Vader seems to be doing Spiderman's hand gesture.

I walked by Suzuki Yakitori in Jiyugaoka last night. I always photograph the yakitori chef when I walk . I find the scene very photogenic. He ended up stopping me to talk to me. The typical questions and compliments I get in Japan. Where are you from? Where is Boston? You speak good Japanese (when you can respond to questions). Why did you come to Japan? How long have you been here? etc. He was kind enough to give me some Yakitori to eat while I was speaking with him. It was extremely good. I'll need to stop by there a little more often and bring some home for dinner...

As I mentioned I really don't get to go out shooting nearly as much as I want to lately. I have tried to focus my commute on some reading so I am not really shooting on my commute right now. I think the heat also really played a part in that as this summer was brutally hot.

I often get contacted by readers of ShootTokyo when they are visiting Japan to see if I want to meet up and shoot. I have met some really great people this way. My busy work and family schedules don't allow me to do this as often as I would like but I was able to meet up with 3 readers who were in town a few weeks ago. As luck would have it the night we decided to meet up it was pouring rain. We tried waiting it out with a few beers but the rain persisted for a few hours so we decided to retire to the Tokyo American Club for some dinner and a few more drinks.

Here I am at the Tokyo American Club sporting one of my new ShootTokyo T-Shirts. I really like the new design. Feel free to order one!

Meet Dennis... He lived in Tokyo in the late 90s and was back in town visiting with his lovely girlfriend Marysol.

It's hard to see Dennis as he is hiding behind the very rare Konica Hexanon 60mm f/1.2 (1 of only 800). You don't get to see this lens very often. It is a beautiful lens. The last 5 pictures in this post were taken with the Hexanon.

Meet Marysol. Her and Dennis make a great couple and pair of photographers...

Meet Andrew. He travels to Tokyo on a regular basis but we seem to have missed each other a few times so were finally able to meet up. He somehow managed to have the same rare Hexanon lens! I somehow kept calling it Hexgon...

I have been thinking about technology a lot lately. I heard a great expression the other day 'Your smart phone is the dashboard to your life". It couldn't be more true than with me. I can do just about everything I need to from my smart phone; work, blog, research, communication, socialize, shop, and learn.

Here is my dashboard:

Here are the apps I use:

Home Screen: Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Contacts, Photos, Maps, Google Maps, Clock, iTunes Store, App Store, Settings, Weather, Passbook, Japan Alert (for earthquakes), Stocks, iBooks, Starbucks Finder, Wall Street Journal (iPad)

Salesforce: Chatter, Radian 6, Concur, Workday, Go to Meeting, Keynote Remote, Logger, Salesforce Dashboard, SF Touch, RSA, KeyNote

Social: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Flickr, 500px, YouTube, Line, Klout

News: Feedly, Flipboard, CNN, Zinio (iPad), Google Currents, Onion, MarketDash (iPad), TechCrunch, Kindle (iPad), TED, KickStarter

Photography: Camera,Snapseed,QuadCamera, iHandy Level, Light Meter

ShootTokyo: ShootTokyo (web app), WordPress, Buffer, Pingdom, MailChimp, Analytics

Games: Pocket God, Moron Test, Traffic Rush, Cat Physics, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds RIO

Japanese: Japanese, Anki, Remembering the Kanji, Cooori

Health: FitBit, 100 Pushups

Productivity: Things, Evernote, SpashID, Calculator, CIA Factbook, MetrO, Compass, Converter, Penultime

Travel: United, Yelp, Starwood, Trip Advisor, Currency, Narita Airport, LoungeBuddy

Plus I have apps for all of the financial institutions I use. I have a lot of the obvious ones that I use constantly like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram but I here are a couple that I highly recommend:

Feedly - As I have said before this is one of my favorite apps. It consolidates all of the blogs and websites that I regularly visit into one place. It allows me to consume a tremendous amount of information in a very short amount of time. Plus I have 4,000+ readers on Feedly!

Buffer - I tend to read a lot of news at one sitting. Often I want to share this out on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. It would be very annoying for my followers if I tweeted 10 or 20 articles at once. This is where Buffer comes in. If I find something I want to share I simply add it to Buffer and x times a day Buffer will release it. It is natively integrated to Twitter and Feedly now making it simple to add ot your Buffer.

Zino - Is a magazine app that allows you to subscribe to just about any magazine for a fraction of the newsstand price. For people that live overseas or travel heavily it is a great app.

Cooori - Is a webapp vs. a native iPhone app but it makes my list nonetheless. It is web based service for studying your Japanese vocabulary and Kanji. Cooori is wildly intelligent and built example sentences based on your prior knowledge. My favorite thing is there is no need to create flashcards, they are prebuilt and you can just choose the books that you are using to study and the cards are loaded for you.

Fitbit - I just got myself a Fitbit last week and I am already mildly addicted. Fitbit does a lot of things but I am using it to track my sleep, record my weight and monitor my sleep. I think the best thing Fitbit does it reminds you to keep moving. As I mentioned before I went from 215lbs a few years ago to 180ish today. I weight myself daily to ensure that I am staying close to that. Fitbit just takes this to another level allowing me to record it, giving me recommendations on how many calories I can consume in a day based on my current weight and movement for the day. This app is a perfect fit for my personality; data, goal setting, tracking, and gamification. I can already see myself walking a little extra to earn a few more points for the board.

If you have any apps that you regularly use and recommend that I don't have listed above please leave me a comment and let me know.

Thanks for stopping by today