After the baptism yesterday, Anthony and I got together with some other friends, and ended up going to Hieidaira (a small community nestled in the mountains, just over the border from Kyoto, in Otsu) to see some huge mushrooms.

Nils Ferry's wife Yoshiko and three-year-old son Greg were with us. I've met Nils many times (such as when he took me to some temples in his area to see the autumn colors last fall), but had never had the pleasure of meeting his wife.

The mushrooms were big and fuzzy....

Apparently, they start out as balls, then start to expand sideways, finally breaking lose at the base of the ball, to then arch upwards.

The final stage in the life of a mushroom this size is normally to be stomped, squished, poked, kicked, and generally thrashed about by a three or four year old boy. These particular mushrooms were miraculously spared that fate.... at least while we where there.

One mushroom ball a bit bigger than a golf ball had somehow broken off and rolled down the hill to just sit there, so we let the kids poke at that.

It was a great trip for little boys, as there were also bugs. What I thought was a honeybee had an unnatural and fairly tenacious attraction to my black camera bag.

I'd never seen a bee quite like it (especially those eyes... freaky!), but since it seemed intent on mating/eating my camera bag, I felt safe enough to lean in and take a picture. The shot above is a full-resolution crop from the much larger image, taken as close as the lens would allow.

Upon arriving home, I did a Yahoo! Search for “fly that looks like a bee,” and sure enough, a bazillion links about the hoverfly, also known as syrphid flies. They tend to mimic the look of bees and wasps (insects that birds don't care to eat), but are harmless and are considered beneficial to gardens. Bees have much smaller eyes, an extra pair of wings, and big antenna sticking out the front. Oh, and a stinger.

Then there was a kind of grasshopper that looked more like dried grass than a bug:

It was virtually invisible until it moved, which it did with surprising speed and distance.

The boys were interested, but preferred smashing an old rotting tree stump.

Here's a nice picture of Greg's Mommy

For completeness, here's one of the only pictures I have of Nils Ferry, out of focus in the background, from when he took me to the Konpukuji Temple last November. It seems that we were both focusing on the pretty colors, figuratively and literally....