Another one?!

Tokyo got another wee tremor just before 8.00am this morning. It made the floor rumble underneath where I was sitting and my rice cooker (which is balancing on top of my fridge) was wobbling about, but it thankfully only lasted about a minute or so. I think three earthquakes in one week is enough, thank you very much, Earth.

Lessons today were just as intense as yesterday and included some maths this time, too. The maths is dead simple but remembering the hundreds (okay, maybe about 40...) equations is going to be an absolute nightmare. I'm going to have to go and study in a minute and will be revising and practicing past paper questions all weekend. At least it will all be over by Wednesday afternoon. I'm already planning on going for a celebratory manicure - you can get a decent one for only £8! Actually, I bought some pretty crazy fake nails when I was shopping in Venus Fort yesterday, and I fully intend to get my nails done Shibuya-girl-style before coming home.

I've eventually got around to setting up a flickr account so that everyone at home can see my photos and won't be subjected to a ridiculously long slide-show when I get back. I've taken far too many and only managed to upload about half so far. Check them out here. I'm continually adding more every day and put them up in the same groups I uploaded from my cameras, i.e. the order is a bit messed up at times. A nice way to look at them is by area on my map. Enjoy!

EARTHQUAKE!

I was woken up at 5:07am today as my room was being shaken about by a magnitude 4.3 earthquake (it was 6.6 nearer the source). It took me a few seconds to work out what on earth was happening, why my bed was shaking, and why everything that I could see through my window was moving and then I pretty much sat bolt upright and thought, "what do I do now?!" Thankfully the tremors only lasted a couple of minutes, but that was long enough for me to transition from being fast asleep to being more than wide awake and very alarmed! The weirdest bit was that even when the ground had stopped shaking, my building was still swaying from side to side. My apartment is on the 8th floor... :S

I now know to be extremely careful what I wish for!

I remembered to take my coat to work today as the weather reports were saying that typhoon Etau was going to hit Tokyo today (apparently the heavy rain yesterday was just a normal tropical storm...). It rained a little for about an hour in the morning and then was sunny all afternoon. I'm pretty sure the typhoon missed Japan and headed straight to the Pacific Ocean instead. Quite glad really, I think having and earthquake AND a typhoon on the same day would be a bit much really.

Work today was good - one of the guys spent an hour explaining how they use combinations of options and interest rate swaps to make more complicated structures. It doesn't sound it, but it is actually really interesting. Hopefully I'll get to come back to this desk for a few more days to learn some more. At the end of the day I got the 'exercise book' for my course, which starts tomorrow. It basically looks like I'm going to be studying for an exam on Japanese financial law. This sales rep 2 malarky could be a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

Mother Nature

Everybody at work todat was talking about yesterday's earthquake; I felt really left out... On one hand, I'm absolutely gutted to have missed it as there probably won't be another earthquake while I'm living here. On the other hand, I think I would have crapped myself had I been on my own when it happened - it made buildings shake and people's stuff moved around. A lot of the objects in my room were not where I left them - my fax machine was hanging off the edge of the desk. Apparently it's usually quite difficult to stay standing up in a magnitude 4.0 earthquake, which is what it was. Scary stuff!

When I got up this morning, it was raining so heavily that it was almost still dark. Thankfully, the rain had eased off a bit by the time I needed to leave for work, so I assumed that the rain was about to finish for the day and left with no jacket or coat and only a wee umbrella. This turned out to be a massive error on my part - Tokyo was hit by typhoon Etau today. Oops. I have never seen such heavy rain before!

My schedule for this week is a bit messed up because on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I'm going to a different office for my JSDA Sales Rep exam course. I was meant to be spending the whole week with the structures desk (FX and interest rate structures for Japanese clients) but will only get two days with them this week and maybe a couple somewhere else. This is a bit of a shame as they are all really nice guys and the structures they design and price are actually pretty interesting.

Where to start...

This weekend has been so incredible, I honestly don't even know where to start!

My ryokan was amazing.
The food was some of the best I've eaten so far.
Kyoto's temples are stunning.
The climate was the hottest I've ever experienced - I got sunburnt whlist wearing factor 50+ sunscreen... THAT'S how hot it was.
The shinkansen train travelled at ridiculous speeds.
And I missed the earthquake in Tokyo this evening that hit 4.0 on the richter scale.

I'm absolutely gutted about the last one - I secretly want to experience a little (not a big one, please!) earthquake while I'm staying in Japan, so I can't believe I was away the weekend Tokyo got one. Apparently buildings moved a bit!

As a result of spending the last two days running around Kyoto, I'm absolutely shattered and will blog properly about my weekend tomorrow. After I've uploaded my rather large collection of photos :)