Black Eggs and Long Life

This family is posing for a picture in Owakudani, a volcanic hot spot in Japan’s Hakone region, where sulfurous hot springs abound. If you look carefully at the building on the hillside behind them, you can see many people lined up to purchase black eggs. Regular eggs are hard-boiled on site so that they become a mottled black color. This is due to a chemical reaction between the eggs and the sulfurous water. According to Japanese legend, eating black eggs adds years to your life. Eating one egg adds seven years to your life. You may eat two eggs to gain fourteen years, but eating a third is said to be highly unadvised!