More Comiket

I decided to take a break from studying this afternoon and headed back to Comiket to see some more cosplay and actually walk around the inside arena too. In what turned out to be an inspired idea, I took the Yurikamome monorail there but this time, stood at the frint of the leading train section. The monorail is completely electric and has no driver, just a massive window at the front, so it felt like I was driving it! (Admittedly, I was standing with lots of small children who actually pretend to drive the train and I got a few odd looks for being the only person over the age of ten standing so close to the front...) I was treated to even better views of the Tokyo Bay area and Odaiba from the front of the train compared to when I took it before and could only look out the side windows. (If you look closely, you can see Gundam poking out the top of the trees.)



I thought that I was being clever by going to Comiket in the afternoon this time, to avoid the crowds. I hadn't factored in the fact that it was Saturday today and also everybody else would have had my 'good idea' after heading along yesterday morning. It was even busier today! I didn't think that it would be possible, but I swear there were ten times as many people! Especially in the cosplay area outside - I could hardly contain myself and took far too many photos. The costumes this afternoon were even more impressive and lots more people had turned up in themed pairs or groups. I only spent an hour wandering around, but could have easily spent a whole day there watching everyone. Here are a few photos but, seeing as I loved them all, I'll upload everything onto my flickr account (eventually...).





(This Mario was definitely one of my favourites!)


Inside was just as crazy as outside (but thankfully air conditioned). Here, they employ people to dress up to help sell comics and merchandise:


But just about everything was already sold out by this afternoon anyway. There seemed to be quite a few interviews with writers/film directors going on that people were crowding around, and apparently you're not meant to take photos of them. Here is what happened when I tried:



I headed back home to do some more past paper questions, got bored, so went out for some okonomiyaki.


I've been told that this is Japan's version of a pizza, but it's more like a cross between a crepe and an omlette with lots of stuff inside and sauce on top. Yum yum! Anyway, I have been trying to work but I seem to have the attention span of a hamster and have ended up blogging instead.

Must. Study. For. Exam...

Comics and corporate finance law

Today has been quite surreal. I woke up and did some 'studying' (I tried, honest...) and then headed off to join the otaku at Comiket in Odaiba with some friends. This event is the world's largest hand-made comic book fair (according to wikipedia) and I have never seen so many people in one place at the same time - it was absolutely heaving!


We kind of didn't anticipate how popular the whole thing was going to be, and there's really only two ways to get to Odaiba, both of which were so busy that it took us about an hour to get to the Tokyo Big Sight (where it's held) and then about 10 minutes to get in. This left me with only about 15 minutes to actually look around before I had to head back to Shimbashi for my final JSDA lesson :( Which just means that I have an excuse to go back again tomorrow :) I spent all the time today checking out the cosplay area outside. Cosplay is when people dress up as their favourite anime characters, and some of the costumes were really impressive.





You could tell which costumes were condsidered to be the best, as they drew the largest crowd of cosplay-paparazzi:


It was a shame to have to go back to class but today's lesson was really useful. We finished up the section on Japanese corporate law, other finance laws and then moved on to calculations associated with bonds and financial statements. There is so much to learn!! Thankfully we did a lot of going over what we've already learnt. I've now just got to memorise it all over the next four days and also work out how to decipher the garbled exam questions.

Intermission

I'm heading to Kyoto tomorrow straight after work for the weekend so there will be no more posts probably until Monday night.

I've been embracing my inner (and outer...) nerd over the past few days working with the quants. Today I finished my two pricing models! They both price a call option - one analytically, using the Black-Scholes model and the other using Monte Carlo simulations. I designed and programmed wee interfaces as well that you type the parameters into (stock price, strike, risk free rate, time to maturity, etc), then press a big button that says "RUN" and it spits out the result. Everybody was very impressed and I'm very proud that I managed to go from having no programming knowledge to designing pricing models in C# in the space of three days! God, I'm a geek... Next thing you know I'll start wearing a pocket protector.

This week has been very different from the last few as the quants have very British work ethics. As in they rock up at 9am, take three coffee breaks a day (that involve leaving the building and walking to insanely posh coffee shops), have a two-hour lunch break (in very posh restaurants) and then head home at about 6.30. I think I've managed to fit in quite well :)

Today's lunch was very tasty - spicy tuna donburi:



Went out for dinner and drinks with Stephen and Zach after work. Ate things on sticks while stading up and then went to a bar where all the drinks were £2. Definitely a good night.

Reasons why I love Tokyo

AKA Reasons why I'm not coming home. Ever.

In no particular order:

The shops are fantastic and so eclectically mental.
People are so polite all the time, even if I'm being an annoying gaijin and getting in their way/not understanding them.
The food is delicious and very reasonably priced. And you don't need to tip.
The overground and underground train systems are super-efficient all over Tokyo and the surrounding areas; there are underground stations on every block and trains every couple of minutes.
All the trains and most of the stations are fully air-conditioned (why can't the London tube be like that...).
You get full 3G mobile reception everywhere, including the underground stations and on the trains (even while they're moving through the tunnels!).
You also get wifi in most stations and trains and they have mobile WiMAX here already.
It's the safest city I've ever been to. And the most convenient.
It's so easy to get away from it all by going to one of the beautiful shrines or heading to the countryside.
Everybody holds lift doors open for people when they get on and off.
All women always use the 'toilet flush sound effect' so you don't hear them pee (I do it too now, so I don't get nasty looks when I come out the cubicle).
If a person has a cold, they wear a surgical mask so that nobody else catches it from them.
There are cartoon characters on everything and everywhere and it is completely socially acceptable to buy things with cartoon characters on them, regardless of your age/sex/occupation.
The posters and adverts are often hilarious.
You will never be thirsty as there are vending machines every 20 yards or so.
So many things are open so late - shops until 10pm, restaurants until midnight and cinemas, bars and internet cafes often all night.
The people who I work with have restored my faith in financial industries and are all so lovely, kind and very down to earth. As far as I can see, RBS Tokyo is not one of the bad guys (they blame everyone at the other RBSs...).
Everybody from Tokyo is slim, looks fantastic and dresses impecably stylishly.
I must be the only female over the age of 16 who doesn't wear stilletoes everyday (how do they manage?!).
Everything is newer than brand new.

The last point was further highlighted when I nipped to the local electronics store after dinner today (a massive 8 floor extravaganza). I needed to buy an external hard drive to store all my millions of photos on! I ended up getting a new flash drive too, as I keep breaking freebie ones I get from career fairs. Check out the 4GB one I bought:


Huge, isn't it? The bit on the left is only the lid! The actual drive is only that 5mm black bit at the top! And it was only £10 - technology is so far advanced here, it's unbelievable. When I was paying for my cool stuff, I saw this TV and instantly wanted to win the lottery so that I could buy it.


It's a 103 inch high definition plasma screen and probably one of most impressive pieces of kit I have ever seen. It costs about £40,000. Yikes...

Work today was really good fun actually and it's going to sound really sad when I tell you what I found enjoyable - today was my first day of learning C#; a computer programming language. I feel so cool right now... Thing is, learning a bit of programming is massively useful for me right now and also completely applicable to what I'm studying at uni next year as well as what I'm doing at work just now. So it's win win for me! I was so proud of my day's achievements - I made a few wee programmes that estimated the value of pi using truncated infinite sums and then Monte Carlo simulations. NERD ALERT. I also used some graphics to display the results and calculation time with buttons and progress bars. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to go into more detail about the maths behind more complicated Monte Carlo simulations and make a programme that will price trades.

Remember folks: it's hip to be square.