About a day's drive from Tokyo you can find Ōwakudani, the volcanic area with hot springs and active sulphur vents in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
The Mountain of Hakone (also known as the Hakone Volcano) is quite active, although the last big eruption happened roughly 3000 years ago. This blast actually created the valley or crater known as Ōwakudani.
Translated from Japanese, Owakudani means Great Boiling Valley.
If you're lucky you can see Mount Fuji from Owakudani, although the sky is filled with sulfurous fumes most of the time.
As we traveled through the mountains of Hakone, we stopped at the Hakone Geo-Museum where visitors can see the bubbling mud pits and watch the sulfurous fumes spew into the air. It was quite the experience, especially for our nostrils.
The cute little Hakone character that informs the children about the volcanic area:
Ōwakudani is known for their black eggs (kuro-tamago 黒卵 ). The locals cook the eggs in the hot sulfur springs. The black color on the shell comes from the sulphur and iron in the water.
The Japanese say that eating the black eggs will add 7 years to your life.
Due to the nature of the area (sulfuric geysers and recurring landslides) the area can be closed at times. It was pretty cool that we got to visit the volcanic area of Hakone known as Ōwakudani.
Michelle and I took a month to travel across Japan and China this past May (2017). It was epic! Follow me @slickwilly and Michelle @curiouser for posts about our adventures!
Hi there, I’m Will. First and foremost I am an entrepreneur and voluntaryist. I aspire to help build a more free world, one that we all want to live in. Some of my biggest passions include cryptocurrencies, marketing, finance, cannabis, traveling, bodybuilding, snowboarding, motorcycles, and Subarus. All pictures are my own unless otherwise stated. I release everything under CC0.
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