The (inadvertent) intrepid explorer

It was pouring with rain when I got up on Sunday, so I decided to properly escape Tokyo this time and head for the countryside to try to get away from the bad weather. So I got the train to Kamakura - a rural town about 50 miles south-west, down the coast from Tokyo.

I got there just in time for lunch and hopped into a wee place near the station as the food looked good.


I ordered a set with tempura (prawn and assorted veggies), udon noodles in broth, rice and assorted pickles. Everything was great, and as expected, apart from the rice. I thought I'd ordered a set that came with plain rice but it turned up covered in tiny wee white fish - there were a lot of little eyes staring at me from my bowl...


After polishing my baby fish off, I got the wee electric train further into Kamakura to start my epic temple-hopping. I started of at Hasedera, which is famous for having beautiful grounds and thousands of tiny statues of Jizo.


There is a system of small caves in the hillside, where statues of various gods have been carved out of the walls:


And even smaller statues are placed next to one of them:


It was all absolutely stunning but very sad too - Jizo is the patron of departed children and all the statues have been left by women who have lost children through miscarriage or abortion. The main temple was huge and housed a 9m tall, gilded Buddha (of the standing, skinny variety), but I wasn't allowed to take photos inside :( So here's one of the outside for you.


After wandering around the temple grounds for a while, I headed off to Daibutsu, which is famous for its giant bronze Buddha (this time sitting down and chubby).


I also climbed inside it (from under his bum) to see what he looked like from the inside. Unsurprisingly, it looked like an inside-out, bronze Buddha. It was here that I tried to join the 'Daibutsu Hiking Course'. Now I thought that this would be a nice woodland path that meandered through the hillside forest, connecting the temples and shrines. How wrong I was.

The 'Daibutsu Hiking Course' is aptly named - it should definitely not be attempted at 3 in the afternoon, when it has been raining, while wearing plimsoles and carrying a rather large handbag. Oh, and when it's hot as hell and approximately 100% humidty. The part of the hike from Daibutsu to the nearest temple was supposed to take 20 minutes - it took me the best part of a hour. The path (if you can even call it that...) went steeply up and even more steeply down, was covered in inch-thick, very slippery mud and pretty much felt like I was trekking through a tropical jungle. And the signposts were only in Japanese. The jungle was beautiful but I was so hot and grumpy that I didn't take any pictures until I reached the closest temple. Sasuke-inari jinja has lots of red torii leading up the steps towards the main temple and also has hundreds of statues and figurines of foxes.



I then headed, on the road this time, to Zeniarai-benten. I entered this shrine complex through a tunnel in the hillside which opened out into a gorgeous clearing. This shrine is famous for its natural springs, which run out through caves under the hillside.


I collected some candles insense and a basket from the main building and headed towards the cave - I lit my candles off others, then lit my insense off them, popped my loose change into the basket and made my way to the caves. It's believed that if you wash your money in the springs and then spend it, it will return to you many times over.


So I spent a little at the shrine, praying for financial success and spent the rest on food! I got the food at a wee town fete sort of affair that I stumbled across on my way back to the train station. I got some fried noodles and yakitori from this massive charcoal grill:


My timing was perfect - as soon as I had finished my food and made it onto the platform, the weather caught up with me and it started to pour.

Escaping Tokyo

I spent the afternoon in Yokohama with a colleague and her friend from university. Yokohama actually isn't much of an escape from the metropolis of Tokyo as it sort of joins on, but is a city in its own right. We got the train there and just wandered around.

We spent a lot of time in China Town - it's the biggest China Town in Japan and certainly the biggest I've ever visited. There were some lovely, very colourful temples and lots and lots of restaurants and food stalls that sold different dim sum and bao tze. Of course, I sampled a few of them (temples and food, that is...).





Yokohama is famous for it's port and this year is celebrating its 150th anniversary. There were a few different events set up, a massive cruise liner anchored in the dock and loads of images of Yokohama's mascot, who appeared to be a potato in a boat.


We came across a few more unusual characters, including a Japanese Colonal Sanders outside KFC.


Tonight was the annual hanabi (fireworks) festival, so I found a wee space to sit (it was so crowded with people!) in one of the parks on the coast and watched the show. Even though I was about 1km away from where the fireworks were actually going off, it was absolutely amazing - I got a fantastic view over the top of the cruise liner in the harbour. They were some of the best fireworks I've ever seen. Every shape and colour imaginable, most of them changing colour three or four times, and on an absolutely huge scale. They went on for well over an hour and were gigantic!



It was a bit mental getting the train back as the thousands of other people who had been out for the hanabi were doing exactly the same thing. Thankfully I brought home an extra large bao tze to snack on when I got in.


Although I did make the mistake of buying a rather dubiously named drink from a vending machine, thinking that it was water, only to find out that it's some strange isotonic thing with a label that reads:


"Pocari Sweat is a healthy beverage that smoothly supplies the lost water and electrolytes during perspiration. With the appropriate density and electrolytes, close to that of human body fluid, it can be easily absorbed into the body."

They make it sound so appetising... It tastes absolutely foul and will now be sitting in my fridge until I'm really desperate for an 'ion supply drink'.

Kimcheeeeeee

Friday was a day of food. I have never consumed so much in one day in my life. I just kept telling myself that I was making up for hardly being able to eat anything when I was ill :)

I got taken out for lunch again to Benihanas for some tepanyaki. We sat around a huge hot plate and our own chef came along and fried Japanese tenderloin steak and beansprouts right in front of us - it was brilliant!


We got given delicious sauces to dip our steak in too and they made us wear paper bibs, just in case any of the food splashes up while the chef is cooking.


After work, I went out for dinner with people I had been working with last week. We headed out to a really good Korean restaurant in Akasaka - one of the credit guys is Korean and he apparently only eats there. This was great for us as he knew exactly what to order and we got loads of freebies too! Including free fried tongue, which I had no idea what type of animal it had previously belonged to. I tried kimchee for the first time and I am now a massive fan. Kimchee is smelly, spicy, fermented Korean cabbage and it's fantastic. I didn't take any photos of the food as there were so many different dishes, I would still be there taking pictures now...

We all headed out for some karaoke after stuffing our faces and I'm pretty sure the booth we were in would have smelt of kimchee after we left.

Back to business

I'm healthier again - hooray! By that I mean that I can actually swallow food now without being in stupid amounts of pain and I made it into work today. So, hopefully, normal blogging shall resume as of now. My antibiotics seem to be working, as does my iodine 'throat gargle', which appears to have been designed for hippos with throat infections:


And came from a pharmacy that likes koalas:


I'm starting to wonder if I went to the vet by accident.

I'm spending this week with the guys who trade options and hybrids. The hybrids trades are so mentally complicated that I feel like I've only just scratched the surface - each trade is completely custom-made and has multiple parameters that can all change the price and risk on a daily basis. They've got to be able to calculate the current value and risk of each trade so that they can then hedge the whole portfolio. There are so many things to keep on top of! And the maths behind it all is horrendous...

I don't really feel like I've achieved much this week and I spent two whole days in bed, so I've not got much to report on. Apart from what I've eaten, of course. I got taken out for sushi for lunch on Monday at the same place I went with my boss on my first day:


Had a ton-katsu bento for tea one night


And got taken to a ton-katsu restaurant for lunch today


(I may have forgotten to take a photo at the start of the meal as I was so hungry. Apologies for the lack of food left on any of the plates!)

They specialised in this weird green leaf called shiso (that looks suspiciously like a nettle...) and gave me tea made from it and also rice that had been cooked with it.

I've spent most of my free time (and my time stuck in the flat) looking for places to stay in Kyoto. I want to go there next weekend and would like to stay in a traditional ryokan or minshuku, where you get tea ceremonies and amazing Japanese food, whilst living in a fantastic old paper house. Unfortunately, none of them seem to offer rooms for one person, especially not one woman. Travelling alone hasn't been a problem until now. Bummer.

Photos from John Swinney's visit

The photos from John Swinney's tour around RBS have been posted on the Scottish Government's Flickr account. They're pretty dull, apart from the ones I'm in, obviously...

Here is the standard 'posed, unnatural conversation' photo, where I actually appear to be grimacing:



Followed swiftly by the 'oh my god, I'm so short it looks like I've been badly photoshopped into this' photo:

I am contagious

Or at least I will be for the next 18 hours or so. I feel like I'm dying and am now going back to bed (again) at 2.45pm. NOT COOL! I WANT TO GO TO KYOTO THIS WEEKEND! Nightmare!

I woke up this morning and was genuinely worried that I may have caught swine flu. Went to the doctor's and he thought that it was glandular fever (fantastic). Thankfully, after some tests, he thinks that it's just a really bad throat infection. Eugh.

So apologies for the lack of blog posts - I have some good photos of food that I will put up when the antibiotics kick in.

Saltire blog part 2

My second weekly round-up can be found here. The formatting is a bit weird... Apologies.

Shop 'til you drop...

I woke up bright and early this morning (not) and headed off towards Harajuku for some retail therapy and Harajuku-girl-spotting. I left my apartment, armed with my camera and credit card but in no way was I prepared for what the Tokyo summer threw at me. I have never experienced heat like today - well over 35 degrees, humid, barely a breeze and clear blue skies. Honestly, I thought that I was going to melt or just spontaneously combust on the pavement.

Shopping in Tokyo has to be the best in the world. I hit Forever21 first to grab a few nice things and was glad that I got there early(ish) as when I left at about noon, there was a massive crowd queueing to get in! I wandered in and out of a few places in Harajuku before ending up in Kiddyland, aka, Holly's-dream-land. Let me try to show you exactly why I loved (and my bank balance hated) this shop so much:


:O

And that was just one small display on one of the six floors! Needless to say, I bought a lot of Hello Kitty related paraphernelia, as well as countless other charater-branded stuff. Happy face!

I then headed towards Jingu-bashi, where all the cool kids hang out on Sundays. Or at least they're meant to. There weren't that many dressed up teens hanging about (it was absolutely boiling...) and not all of them were happy for me to take photos of them. (At least I asked! Lots of people just snapped away like they were visiting the zoo.) Here are the happy few who laughed at my attempts to ask for their permission in Japanese:









I then walked down to Shibuya, got lost in a department store and then made a bee-line for Shibuya 109 - the place to shop for the latest Tokyo trends. It's amazing: nine floors of concessions, each with it's own distinct style of clothing and music blaring from huge speakers. The shop assistants are dressed from head to toe in whatever mini-shop they're working for sells and were often standing at the entrance, shouting about what's on sale or better than the next door shop. It was shopping like I'd never experienced before - hundreds of concessions, hundreds of immaculately-styled Shibuya girls, shouting, overlapping dance tracks from neighbouring shops, squeezed into a building that's not quite big enough for it all - I loved it! I got myself one of those little straw trilbys too :)

By the time I left there it had been dark for some time and my feet were about to mutiny, so I dived into the first ramen joint I could find and then got the train home. The chashu-ramen (char sui pork and noodles) was delicious and tasted even better because I had ordered it from a vending machine! I kid you not. The machine is just at the entrance to the shop:


I put in my money, made my selection, took my ticket (the order is sent to the kitchen) and then joined the queue for a seat. Here's what I got; not bad for a meal from a vending machine!

Curiouser and curiouser

Saturday was so surreal. I went to the St Andrews Society's Summer BBQ and Ceilidh in the afternoon, not really knowing what to expect, and had a fantastic time. It was held in the embassy, which automatically made it feel like I was in the UK. Add to that multiple saltire and lion rampant flags, as well as guys wearing kilts, and it really didn't feel like I was still in Tokyo! The afternoon's entertainment kicked off with a performance from the embassy's taiko drummers:


I got involved in the action too:


This was the start of the weird series of events. The music and the drums were Japanese, but the majority of the players were British employees at the embassy. The next act was a pipe band - all Scottish events need at least one piper! Although the members of this pipe band were all Japanese!


It was very odd to be standing in Tokyo, listening to an (amazing!) all-Japanese pipe band playing Highland Cathedral, with the noise of cicadas in the background. It felt like I was at home and very far away at the same time.

Everyone there waas lovely and out to have a good time. This lead to a very succesful ceilidh! I wasn't so sure how it would work out, but every got the jist eventually! I also got to meet up with my guarantor, Stephen, and one of last year's Saltire Interns, Zach.


After the ceilidh finished, us three and some others headed off for karaoke - my first time ever! It was such a good laugh, I can't wait to do it again some time soon!




It was exactly like the karaoke shown in 'Lost In Transalation' - we got taken to our own little booth where we picked the songs and then sang along to the words on a big tv screen. Hilarious.

Two weeks in

It's scary to think that I'm already a quarter of the way through my internship; it feels like I only just got here! My last day at the CDS desk was pretty good - it's been a quiet week, giving me time to learn lots. The desk manager spent an hour today going over the structure of a securities company and other financial institutions, which really helped me see where the various specialities fit in. It also helped put the work I've been doing for the last two weeks into perspective. I don't think it was his intention, but it also made me make some decisions about my future, i.e. if I do decide to go into finance when I graduate I:
a) Am never being an investment banker ("those guys don't ever sleep, but you get used to it I suppose").
b) Am working in Tokyo as the environment here is a lot less hectic than in the City or in NY - the stock exchange even closes for lunch!
c) Would probably lean towards trading, with the aim of one day becoming a hedge fund manager. They earn eye-watering sums of money for being very good at what they do (or at least they should be good at it...).
Although I've not experienced working in research, structures or exotics yet, so I can't tell which sector I prefer just now.

We got in a massive amount of Burger King for lunch today. Upset at it not being Japanese food again, I ordered the 'teriyaki burger', which turned out to be brilliant! In retrospect, I probably should have ordered the new Japanese limited edition 'Angry Burger'. (Check out the website, it's hilarious.)

I went to my first conveyor-belt sushi restaurant for tea after work! I'd asked one of my colleagues where the nearest one was - turned out there was a cheap and cheerful place within Tokyo station, just next to the office.


I had nigiri with seared maguro (tuna), ebi (prawn) and unagi (eel) and also some tuna maki. The plates were colour coded for price and you just stack them up and ask for the bill. This is where I got excited - the waitress came over with an electronic scanner and scanned my stack of plates! The handheld machine then worked out how many of each price were in the stack and printed out the bill for me to take to the cash desk - awesome!


Living here is like being a time traveller - I am constantly fascinated by the technology and it honestly feels like I'm living about 10 years in the future. Everything is automatic, there are vending machines on every street and most electronic devices talk to you in Japanese - the moving walkways in Narita warned you that they were about to end when they sensed you going past. My washing machine is amazing in that it is almost completely silent and doesn't move at all. I know that sounds a bit sad to have noticed that, but seriously, how does it not make any noise or shake about when the spin cycle is running?!

I'm such a pie

Half of what I write here is about food! When ever I go on holiday with my family, all we do is go out to eat and then take photos of the food. So I have a reputation to maintain whilst I'm in Japan; I couldn't let my family down.

Here is yesterday's lunch:




It was a pot of rice, topped with chopped spring onions (negi) and thinly sliced pork that had been boiled with ginger and onions. It was so tasty! The wee chain that sells it is apparently quite famous as they specially import the spring onions from Kyoto. I was told that the negi is the best in Japan - I'd go as far as to say the best in the world, it was that good.

I'd snacked all evening at the embassy so on my way home I picked up a few wee things to tide me over until I woke up for breakfast:




The wee dish of chopped raw vegetables was too cute to say no to (they turned out to have been generously doused in vinegar, which I strongly dislike, so were basically inedible...) and a salmon-filled o-nigiri were exactly what I needed.

The credit desk all got treated to Indian take-out for lunch today, courtesy of one of the brokers they deal through. It wasn't as good as Indian food at home, but very tasty (and free!) all the same. We'd ordered enough to feed a small army, so I decided to get a bento for my tea as I was too full to eat out.



It consisted of rice, a big fillet of salty salmon, pickles, aubergine and a bit of fried chicken. Hidden under the salmon were some pickled vegetables of some sort, a bit of tamago (Japanese omelette), a mushroom and a bit of lotus root (renkon).



I got all of this from little take-out stands or foodhalls underneath all the buildings in the financial district. There is so much to choose from and it's all so cheap! Lunch times are NEVER going to be boring :)

Och Aye

Yesterday was so surreal. Unfortunately, it absolutely poured with rain all morning and afternoon, so we couldn't see the eclipse at all. And because it was only a partial eclipse in Tokyo, it didn't even get any darker than it already was. Sad face...

John Swinney (the Cabinet Secretary for finance and sustainable growth, in the Scottish Parliament) and his entourage tipped up at the office just after 12.00. My line manager, the main boss and myself chatted with them all for a bit and posed for numerous photos infront of RBS logos. They were a really nice bunch! I was mainly answering questions like, "How did you end up working in Tokyo?", and, "How are you enjoying it so far?", so it was a good opportunity to big up the SaltireFoundation - the other, secret aim of my internship. They then went off to lunch and I went back to work.

After work, I headed straight for the British Embassy, which is on the other side of the Imperial Palace Gardens. I actually walked the whole way around the back of the embassy, thinking that it was the park - it is huge and has massive gardens. The site is so big that there are houses inside for the ambassadors. It was really weird walking in as it really is a little Britain in the centre of Tokyo - all the buildings are Georgian, there are roses in the gardens and Land Rovers parked in the driveways. The reception itself was actually held in one of the houses, rather than the main embassy building. John Swinney gave a nice wee speech (he said "alliance" an awful lot though...), as did Stephen Baker (my guarantor) and one of the Japanese heads of Suntory.

It was after the speeches that the networking really kicked-off. I made some brilliant contacts, including one guy from the British Chamber of Commerce, who promised to help me find work if I decided to move to Tokyo in the future! Result. I also realised just how small the world is. One guy I was talking to had sent his daughter to Mary Erskine's (my old school!) while they were living in Edinburgh for a bit. I was later introduced to a girl who had graduated from St Andrews in 2006 (international relations) and then gone on to work in the embassy here. Then, someone dragged over this unsuspecting Japanese man as it turned out that his daughter has just finished her first year of physics at St Andrews - crazy!

It was a lovely evening, full of surprises, and I've now been invited back to the embassy for a barbeque and ceilidh on Saturday. Hopefully this will give me a chance to meet even more people who live in Tokyo and make some more friends - most evenings I feel like a bit of a norman! There acually seem to be more 'Scottish' events here in Tokyo than at home! The St Andrews Society runs bbqs, ceilidhs, Burns suppers, Highland games and other events all year - last year 1500 people turned up for the summer Highland games and 500 went to the Burns supper. I don't think I've ever even been to a Burns supper... The Japanese people who attended probably know a lot more about Rabbie Burns than I do! How strange to encounter all this thousands of miles away from Bonnie Scotland.