Spiders anyone?

Today, we went for a walk. It was a cloudy day, and the spiders were out. We live among fields of rice, which is a popular area for the large joro-gumo, the Queen of Japanese Spiders. Their webs are between lampposts, in the irrigation ditches, between trees, and in our bushes. Looking up, you will see webs across phone wires, but it looks as if there are spiders dangling in the air. The webs are huge and super reinforced. We touched the edge of one, and it was like touching starched, steel fishing wire. The scary part is that there is usually a huge female in the center of the web, and then several "smaller" males lurking on the outside waiting to mate. These spiders are everywhere, and I get shivers just thinking about them. I feel like I'm in Arachnophobia!