I found a bigger worm than this a few years ago, but this was still a very impressive specimen. Around 35cm long. I’m no expert on worms, so I cannot identify it with certainty but it seems to be Siebold’s Worm = Metaphire sieboldi (also known as Pheretima sieboldi) = shiiboruto-mimizu.
I found lots of these weird plants on the side of Kane-yama (Mt Kane) in Munakata today. I couldn’t find them in my plant book so I searched on Internet using the phrase: weird white ghost like plants in the forest. Amazingly, this search brought up the correct thing immediately and it’s actually called a Ghost Plant, or Indian Pipe in North America.
This plant has no chlorophyll, hence the white colour, which also means that it cannot make its own food. Instead, it is a parasite (or symbiote) of underground fungi that, in turn, are symbiotes living on the roots of trees, from which they gain food. It’s a pretty complicated relationship!
Ghost plant = Monotropa uniflora = gin-ryousou-modoki (Japanese)
Found this large ground beetle trying to drag an earthworm across the road…
It’s a species of Carabus; probably Carabus Dehaanii (Japanese: oo-osa-mushi).
