Blooming marvellous

I decided to try taking different trains on the underground this morning to try to cut down my journey time a bit, which worked, but it seems that absolutely EVERYONE who lives in my area goes this way too - the stations were absolutely heaving with commuters and I narrowly avoided being pushed onto a train by a wee woman wearing white gloves who shouted. A lot. I'll try to get a photo of the 'pushers' tomorrow morning as it's actually a really good system - they keep people away from the edge of the platform until the train has arrived and then shove as many people as possible into each carriage.

I spent this morning at the Bloomberg office (in the Marunouchi Building, next to mine) being trained in how to use their 'Bloomberg Professional Service'. I want to leave RBS and work for them - their office is the coolest and most futuristic 4 floors of a building that I have ever been in! And, most importantly, all the food and drink in the uber-modern canteen area is free! You walk through a tunnel that's lit with eerie blue lights to get from the reception into the main concourse.



Then, running diagonally across the whole floor is a stream of stock exchange tickers and figures. Also at one end of the office is a massive aquarium - apparently one of the CEOs liked fish!



You can also see a bit of the cafeteria seating in the photo. All the food and drink (and there's plenty choice) is completely free to employees. I think it's to try to persuede you to stay in the office over lunch and carry on talking business. I was a bit jealous as I accidentally ordered tofu instead of chicken for my lunch (they looked really similar) and at that point in time, I wanted something that didn't have a slimey texture. A lot of Japanese food seems to be slimey or chewy or an odd combination of the two, which is great if you're expecting it, but not if you think you are biting into chicken...

The weather was so stunning today that I decided to take some photos of the views from my building:

The first one shows Tokyo Station and the other two show the Imperial Palace and Gardens (the last photo is actually the view from Bloomberg's building, but their view was better!).

I spent the afternoon learning about options and swaps with the office's dollar options trader. Also, I've started researching the kind of stuff I'll need to know for my 'JSDA Securities Sale Representative Class-2' exam. I'm hoping to sit this (the Japanese equivalent of the FSA's exams) whilst I'm here with RBS as it would be more than fantastic for my CV - most people don't get to sit it until their first year in a graduate position. If I pass, it also means I might be able to study for the 'Sales Rep Class-1' exam and sit that too, and that one includes a lot of the options stuff that I started learning about today. If (and that's a really big IF) I pass that one, then I would actually be a fully qualified trader and could pretty much walk into a position at any financial instituion in Japan. All together now: "Oooooooo."

I had a bit of a wander around the other buildings in the financial district after work this evening, mainly to try and suss out where the good places to get lunch are! The Marunouchi area is very similar to Manhattan - all the buildings are new skyscrapers with fancy interiors and even fancier shops, sitting next to a large park that acts a bit like a small version of central park. It looks even more like New York once it's dark.

Oh, and I still haven't unpacked yet. Oops.

It's off to work I go

My first day at work was pretty exciting. When I left to take the subway in the morning, I was so surprised by the number of people walking in my nieghbourhood - when I arrived on Sunday there was hardly anyone to be seen. Then, there were even more people crowded underground, getting the trains to work. Where had they all been at the weekend?! Thankfully, it wasn't as hectic as I had imagined - I didn't have to be pushed onto the train and I made it to work in one piece after dodging past all the fast-walking fast-talking salarymen.

The building I'm in (the Shin-Marunouchi Centre Building) is fantastic - I'm working on the 20th floor (RBS has the 9th, 19th, 20th and 21st floors) and on one side of the front office there is a fantastic view across the Imperial Palace gardens towards Shinjuku. I spent most of the morning being shown around the offices and introduced to everyone. I then got taken out for lunch and ate my first authentic sushi :)

Sushi in the UK doesn't even come close to the real deal - this was absolutely oishi (delicious). My boss ordered us a platter each that had tuna, some sort of white fish, squid, crab, eel, mackerel, see urchin and fish roe sushi. The crab was definitely the best one (the tuna came a very close second), the squid was an odd mix of crunchy and chewy, and the sea urchin was definitely an aquired taste... It also came with green tea and miso soup, with a wee square of black sesame pudding to finish. It was at this point that it really dawned on me that I was living in Japan and I couldn't stop grinning like an idiot for a good half hour.

I spent yesterday afternoon and most of today trying to learn as much as possible from the sales guys and the traders about bonds, swaps, derivatives and futures (I still have a lot to learn...) and generally getting some fantastic advice about the industry. I'm finding learning the intricacies of the markets really interesting and often very surprising. I've only been with RBS for two days, but already I've had a great insight to a completely new, and very exciting, world.

This morning I got to go to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. I was completely underwhelmed. The whole trading floor with men in suits shouting and gesticulating wildly at screens and each other has been replaced with a bank of twenty or so computers occupied by a handfull of people sitting calmly and quitely infront of the screens. The 'tour' was really just a bird's eye view of a glorified office.



It just made me wonder what happened to all the shouting men. Where have they gone? What do they shout at now? Hopefully I should fare better with tomorrow's tour of the Bloomberg building and my subsequent Bloomberg training.

Went out with a colleague after work and had yakitori for tea tonight. Apparently the Japanese aren't a fan of cooking anything; it's not just fish they eat raw. I had wasabi chicken breast that had only just been seared (hello salmonella), chicken neck, chicken shoulder, barely-seared chicken liver (which has a consistency not dissimilar to butter), chicken wing, chicken thigh (I think...), meatballs made from chicken meat and cartillage (that's what the crunchy bits were anyway) and courgette. All on sticks and prepared infront of you by a chef in traditional Japanese garb. It all came with a bowl of grated daikon that was topped with a raw egg - the aim is to mix the two together and use as a pallet cleanser between the different 'sticks'. Again, all of it was absolutely delicious, if a little different from the food I'm used to at home!