At the end of last week I got the very nasty Norovirus and I have been down and out this weekend. It is reaching an epidemic level in Japan this season. It nearly killed me the first two days. It is easy to see some it is so dangerous for young children and elderly who can die of organ fatigue while fighting this. I felt like I was kicked in the stomach a few hundred times. If you have ever had food poisoning this is a very similar experience. I have actually had both food poisoning and Norovirus in the past so I have good basis of comparison. I haven't felt so helpless is a very long time. I am very lucky to have had my wife here to take care of me.

It typically passes in a couple of days and then you just need to rest and recover for a few more. Yesterday I could barely sit up my stomach hurt so much. I think I spent $100 on iTunes entertainment for myself while I was in bed. I was able to catch up on the lastest episodes of Burn Notice, Breaking Bad, Pawn Stars, Top Chef, The Good Wife, and Blue Bloods. It is not very often I get a day where I simply lay and watch television.

Today I was able to use the down time to get productive. Email can and does rule way too many of our lives. We are all subscribed to too many mailings lists. Some we signed up for because we wanted to and others we get signed up to. I have been finding lately in my personal email that 'junk mail' was overtaking my inbox. It not that it just becomes something that you need to delete. Now that we all have iPhones and iPads all with the same accounts on them it actually worse to get mail you don't really want as it distracts you more as it breaks your focus on whatever you are doing as you want to check your mail when the 'ping' tone goes off. What you end up doing is deleting the mail vs. unsubscribing from it. I spent the better part of this morning unsubscribing to a few hundred mailings lists.

I even went and set up IMAP on my ShootTokyo email. Believe it or not I was running on ShootTokyo email on a POP client on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. For those of you that doesn't know what that means - it means I am stupid. It means that went I delete the mail in one of those places it exists in the other so I spend a lot of time rereading mails. I was just too lazy to stop and figure out how to set up IMAP. It took me about 20 minutes to figure it out and change my 3 accounts. It is a bit embarrassing that I used such a nonsensical approach for so long.

I can't imagine how many hours these two actions will save me in the next year. So often we need to just get to it and make some changes that will save us so much time in the future. I was also able give a few hours to cleaning up my Lightroom catalog. I have been making a lot of progress on this. Soon I will have a completely keyworded and clean Lightroom catalog.

Me in the mirror!

I always find it funny when people comment on my profile pictures on Google+ or Facebook and say it doesn't make me look like a photographer. How are photographers suppose to look? I hate to disappoint but I take 90% of my photographs dressed like this...

I realized I haven't posted any images of my new favorite sushi shop Pintokona (B2 Metro Hut, Roppongi Hills, 6-4-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo). I eat here probably 3-4 days a week. It is fast, cheap and super yummy!

Always start with the tamogo...

My Sushi Master rolling my Negitoromaki times 2! I love this place...

Google had a cool doodle for the Japan elections today... No matter how long I live in this country I don't think I will ever understand the politics of Japan. I was confused, stunned, when I saw previous Prime Minster Abewas running again. I was even more surprised when I learned he was the front runner. I have so much to learn...