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After burning a considerable hole in my wallet while shopping in Harajuku and Shibuya on Sunday, I started my third week at RBS Securities. I spent the week at the exotics desk with the guys who trade options and hybrids. The hybrids trades are so mentally complicated that even after learning about them for a whole week, 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 (sometimes hourly) basis. They've got to be able to calculate the current value and risk of each trade so that they can then hedge their whole portfolio. There are so many things to keep on top of! Thankfully, they use some pretty sophisticated Excel spreadsheets to help them with pricing and calculating things like volatility. But the maths behind it all is horrendous... I shouldn’t have found it too tricky (as a physics student, I should be able to cope with some extra maths and statistics) but I swear that these traders speak a different language. All I heard was, “gamma this,” and “delta that,” and, “did you trade the vega?” – apparently they speak Greek! And here I was trying to pick up some Japanese…

By Friday I’d caught up with the jargon. I would have achieved more had I not had to spend two days in bed. I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling awful and not able to swallow because my glands had swollen up so much. Thankfully, my colleagues were outstandingly helpful and sympathetic and pointed me in the direction of the Tokyo Medical Centre. On my way to the health centre (apologies for infecting commuters on the underground…) I couldn’t help but wonder if I was the first Saltire Intern to have to go to a foreign doctor for medical help. I was a bit scared by it all, but was reassured when the doctor turned out to be English and, after many tests, I found out that I had a really bad throat infection rather than anything nastier. He put me on a week’s worth of some pretty hefty antibiotics and within 48 hours I felt much better. Phew!

Feeling healthy again come the end of the week, I decided to escape the metropolis of Tokyo and experience some more of what Japan has to offer. I went to Yokohama on Saturday with a colleague and her friend. 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. Saturday night was the annual hanabi (fireworks) festival - 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 pouring with rain when I got up on Sunday, so I decided to head for the countryside to try to get away from the bad weather. I got the train to Kamakura - a rural town about 50 miles south-west, down the coast from Tokyo - for some temple-hopping. I started of at Hasedera, which is famous for having beautiful grounds and thousands of tiny statues of Jizo. There was also a system of small caves in the hillside, where statues of various gods have been carved out of the walls. 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. After wandering around the temple grounds for a while, I headed off to Daibutsu, which is known for its giant bronze Buddha. I then went to Sasuke-inari jinja, which has lots of red torii leading up the steps towards the main temple and hundreds of statues and figurines of foxes. I finished off the day at 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. Here, I collected some candles insense and a basket from the main building - I lit my candles off others, then lit my insense, 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 rinsed it thouroughly, spent a little at the shrine praying for financial success and spent the rest on food!

I’ll let you know if it’s worked…