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These last few days have just sped by and my flight home seems far too soon!

I spent last week in the bank with the real estate guys and the porfolio managers. My week in the bank was very different to the front office - it was so quiet! The office is a lot smaller and there are far fewer people, monitors or phones around, which made it weirdly silent at times. I spent my time there learning about what the portfolio managers and real estate guys do, which seemed to me to be a mix of corporate finance, investment banking and accountancy. For the last three days, I analysed companies' financial reports (looking at their balance sheets, income statements and cash flows to see where they made/lost money) and wrote a wee report. My report was designed to provide supporting information about how well Marubeni, a trading company, did in FY2009 – this information would be added to any credit application that the company might lodge with RBS and will hopefully come in handy for the team.

This week I'm back in the (more exciting) front office, this time with one of the sales desks - the people who sell yen denominated products to mainly non-Japanese clients. It feels good to be back where the action is! Today there was one of the monthly JGB (Japanese government bond) auctions. Over two billion yen's worth of 10 year bonds were auctioned off and RBS were pretty successful (not actually sure if I'm allowed to say how successful...). It was an interesting auction to witness, as these were the first set of bonds to be released by the new government. As many of you may be aware, Japan had its general elections this weekend and, for the first time in over 50 years, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) defeated the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This landmark election obviously affected the markets, in particular bumping up the value of the yen (not so great for me, who is still spending sterling!) and was also expected to have an impact on today's auction. To be honest, it didn't seem to alter anything by much, but it was still a good learning experience for me to be involved in a fairly ordinary auction session.

Last week, I had a fantastic time acting as a tour guide for my friend from home who managed to pop over and visit me for a week. She left early yesterday morning, and I feel sad to be heading home soon, too. But firstly, I've got to work out how on earth to pack all my stuff! I was 2kg over the weight limit on the way out here and have been indulging in a considerable amount of retail therapy, so packing is not going to be easy or fun... Is anybody else having to ship a big box of stuff home?!