My new home, Ise-shi

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Today my bosses daughter, Tsubasa, took Kristine and I on another tour of our city. She is going to school at Kansas State, so her English is very good. She took us to Okage Yokocho, an area that resembles old Japan outside of the Ise shrine. We walked around the town and toured a traditional Japanese house. We then bought good luck charms with our fortune inside and tied the fortunes with others to a small rope for good luck. Tsubasa read my fortune and said it was very good. She said I was strong, but stubborn (how very true). She also said that if I gave myself completely to someone, I would have very good luck in love. Later, Kristine and I met up with Pam and went back to actually see the Ise shrine and swim in the river below it. The shrine in Ise is said to be the holiest in Japan. Because of this, you can't walk up to it and can actually only see the top of the building from behind the gate. You also can't take any pictures of it. Hopefully I will actually get to walk up to the next shrine I go to.

Since I've been doing so much touring around my city, I haven't been able to get settled in my apartment yet. I don't have many plans, that I know of yet, over the next few days so I'm going to try to get my apartment set up so that it will start to feel more like home. I'm still really enjoying being here and feel as if I'm adjusting well.