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Just like all the other the interns, I’m finding it hard to believe that I’m already half way through my placement. On one hand, it feels like I’ve hardly been in Tokyo for any time at all, but on the other it feels like I’ve been living here for ages. I’m comfortably set in my daily routine of getting up and heading to the office and the quirks of Japanese business practice seem (almost) normal. I’ve definitely perfected the art of giving and receiving business cards and bowing. A lot.

I spent last week with the quantative developers, or 'quants' as they're called in the business. These are the guys who write all the programmes, spreadsheets and other bits of software for the traders and sales people. Basically, if you need to calculate the risk, volatilty or price of a particular trade or portfolio, you ask a quant and they will come up with an awfully clever way of doing it using a computer. The three guys who work at RBS Tokyo all come from similar backgrounds to mine - two did engineering degrees and the other has a degree and PhD in physics. It seems to me that many of the scientists who go into finance end up as quants or in research. The plan for the week was for me to learn some C# programming language – I was more than happy to get some programming experience as, surprisingly, I don't get taught any coding languages as part of my physics course.

It sounds nerdy, but I found learning C# really enjoyable. 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 was win win for me! After a crash course, I made a few wee programmes that estimated the value of pi using truncated infinite sums and then Monte Carlo simulations. After a few more days, I had designed and finished two pricing models. They both priced a call option - one analytically, using the Black-Scholes model and the other using Monte Carlo simulations. I designed and programmed wee graphics interfaces as well that you type the parameters into (stock price, strike, risk free rate, time to maturity, etc), press a big button that says "RUN" and it spat out the result. Everybody was very impressed and I was very proud that I managed to go from having no programming knowledge to designing pricing models in C# in the space of three days! Remember folks: it’s hip to be square…

I spent this weekend in Kyoto, hopping from temple to temple in some of the hottest and most humid weather I’ve ever experienced – I honestly thought that I was going to spontaneously combust on a number of occasions. I travelled from Tokyo to Kyoto by shinkansen: the bullet train that cruises at eye-watering speeds and completes the 514km journey in just over two and a half hours. Kyoto is an absolutely brilliant city with great shops, good food and stunning temples and I loved the traditional Japanese ryokan that I stayed in.

All in all, it’s been a fantastic first month and I can’t wait to see what the next month has in store for me!