Letter Home: Greetings From Tokyo
Alumnus Naoki Shiba writes us a letter about his fast-paced career in a city both familiar and new.
Fall 2024
By Naoki Shiba ’17
I see the news flash in bright red on my monitor — the Japanese yen has dropped to 160.245 per dollar. A historic weakness in the Japanese currency has made Japan one of the most attractive global markets to invest in recently, and as a financial trader working at an investment bank in Tokyo, I get to see what’s happening firsthand.
After graduating Rice in 2017, I moved to Tokyo to begin work as a trader. Although my parents are Japanese, I had spent most of my life living abroad, mainly in the United States and the Netherlands. Moving to Tokyo was new and exciting for me, but also daunting. Almost seven years in, I still feel like a foreigner in the country where my passport was issued. The indirect style of communication here has taken considerable adjustment. The Japanese clients I interact with rarely open up about what they are thinking, whereas I am used to speaking more openly.
A typical workday starts at 7 a.m., when I head to my office in the Roppongi district to catch up with the overnight global market moves. By 9 a.m., the Tokyo market has opened and trading begins. The office atmosphere here is not dissimilar to how Wall Street is portrayed in Hollywood movies — dozens of monitors displaying flashing red and green numbers, salespeople and traders yelling prices, and phones constantly ringing with investors looking to trade.
The office atmosphere here is not dissimilar to how Wall Street is portrayed in Hollywood movies — dozens of monitors displaying flashing red and green numbers, salespeople and traders yelling prices, and phones constantly ringing with investors looking to trade.
At Rice, I majored in chemical and biomolecular engineering and dreamed of being a scientist or engineer. But I was drawn to financial trading for the fast pace and the thrill of making decisions that involve substantial amounts of capital. That decision has positioned me to educate global investors about the Japanese market and Japanese investors about the markets outside of Japan. Although I rarely use my engineering degree directly, I am grateful for my education at Rice because it taught me how to lead and interact with people from diverse backgrounds.
Outside work, I’ve started to compete in marathons across Japan. So far, I have run in seven prefectures (analogous to a state in the U.S.), and my goal is to complete a marathon in all 47. Each prefecture displays local pride in hosting their marathons, showering runners with souvenirs and staging traditional performances next to the course. One race that was particularly memorable for me was a marathon in Tohoku, a prefecture in the northern part of Japan; at one of the aid stations, instead of water, I was served local beef tongue!