Patty and I have been enjoying Kyoto. For her it was a bit of a pilgrimage, returning to a place that had such an impact on her nearly four decades ago. And I was looking forward to seeing old Japan, the temples and their gardens and learning more about the origins of Buddhism as practiced here. Let's Go! and John have been abandoned in Fukuoka on the northwest coast of Kyushu while we have had this experience. Today we return to Fukuoka and Marinoa Marina. I selected Marinoa in Fukuoka as a place to leave the boat mainly because I had heard that it provided better shelter in the event of a typhoon and one was threatening when we made our decision. In fact, we shaved two days off our cruising plans because of this. In addition, there are no cruiser notes on Marinoa since no foreign yachts go there so I thought we should check it out and report. This I will do in a separate posting. I understand from another yacht via email that there are fifteen of us on the path north this year and that must be some kind of record. We have seen only one other. I guess that is because we are last in the line. However, when we depart in the next few days for Hokkaido up the west coast of Honshu, we will make up for lost time, weather permitting.