kitkats of japan

Japanese KitKat candy bars come in all sorts of weird, bizarre flavors. When we visited last year, we noticed that there’s definitely a ‘candy culture’ around interesting and unusual sweet (and sometimes sweet-bordering-on-savory) treats. So, when thinking about a fun souvenir to bring home, what better thing to share with our friends and clients than a sampling of Japanese KitKats in assorted odd flavors?

In Tokyo, there are entire stores devoted to selling a full range of KitKats to fans of the chocolate wafer candy bars. So, we made a bee-line for the flagship (?) boutique store for Japanese KitKats—the KitKat Chocolatory, which is in the Ginza neighborhood—right around the corner from a lot of the high-end department stores, and just a short walk (or maybe a medium-sized walk) from the old fish market.

The store on the first floor was small, but upstairs, there’s a café, in case you want a beverage to go with your weird Japanese KitKat. Since KitKats are Nestlé products, don’t be surprised if Nescafé is offered to you as a drink option. Personally, I don’t trust Nescafé, because the word “nescafé” translated to English from a slurred-together Spanish, literally means, “It’s not coffee.” (No es café.) Our recommendation—stay downstairs and load up on candy bars.

So what kind of flavors of KitKat can you find in Japan? Well, there are some standard milk and dark chocolate KitKats, some of which are made with higher-grade chocolate, some with cacao percentages identified, for those of you who aren’t yet in a 12-step program for chocoholism. But we bought some other crazy flavors, too, including maple pomegranate, strawberry pistaschio and butter. Yeah. Butter-flavored KitKat bars! I’m just hoping that it’s not a a wafer cookie coated in actual butter. I haven’t actually sampled that one, yet. I’ll let you know.

Or, better yet, you could find out for yourself! And you don’t even have to travel all the way to Japan! If you’re anywhere near Brooklyn, on Sunday, April 28, 2019, we’re hosting a special Japanese KitKat Tasting Party at Hinterlands Bar, in Brooklyn, from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. We’ve got dozens of different flavors of KitKat that are sold in Japan, including fermented soybean, apple, matcha, strawberry, rum raisin, azuki paste sandwich flavor, and something called “Hand Talk,” which appears to have something to do with Halloween. Some flavors don’t have photos on the package, and they’re only labeled in Japanese, so there’ll be a lot of surprise flavors to taste, too—that’s for sure.

 

In addition to tasting KitKats, we’ll be raffling off a lot of fun travel prizes, and we’ll have information about a couple of exclusive private departures that we’re leading in 2019 and 2010—including a National Geographic Journey to Japan!

Here’s the thing, though. Japanese KitKats don’t grow on trees. At least we think they don’t. Who knows, really? The point is that we’ll have a finite supply of Japanese KitKats on hand at our party, so if you want to guarantee that you’ll be able to try at least a few of them, you’ll need to RSVP for this one. Just send us an email to info@huckleberrytravel.com, or you can RSVP on Facebook at this link.

And, of course, if you’re thinking about a fabulous adventure in Japan, don’t hesitate to let us know. We’d love to help with something like that!