Owakudani 大涌谷
Part of the Hakone Loop includes Owakudani which means the big, boiling valley. Why do they call it that you ask? Because it smells like sulfur from the boiling trenches you see along the walk. As a tourist attraction, they hard boil eggs in the volcanic waters. The eggs turn black. Of course no one would normally pay the prices listed at Owakudani for a black, hard-boiled egg given that those visiting the place are almost ill from the smell of rotten eggs the sulfur provides to begin with. So they created the tale that if you eat these eggs boiled here you will live an extra seven years.
As evidence of the long living, they have hard-boiled Hello Kitty. The fact that Hello Kitty never seems to die is proof positive that there is something to the Owakudani, black, hard-boiled eggs.
Owakudani is actually not a very pretty place. However, the views of Mt. Fuji from Owakudani can be spectacular, and the cable you get to ride in on is lots of fun.
The word 黒タマゴ on Hello Kitty means “black egg” as if you couldn’t tell that Hello Kitty was a black egg.
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