How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Motoko Rich, The Times’s Tokyo bureau chief, discussed the tech she's using.

What kind of tech tools do you use to cover news in Japan?

Probably the most important piece of hardware I regularly use — aside from my laptop and cellphone — is a backup battery to recharge my phone and power my laptop on the road.

North Korean missile tests have disproportionately occurred while I have been out of the office reporting on another story or attending a school event for my children, or over the weekend. So if I have to set up on the side of a soccer field or on a bus, I just plug my phone and laptop into a Mophie Powerstation XXL, a battery the size of a mass-market paperback (although considerably heavier).