Japanese KitKat Madness

I bet most of us have ever eaten KitKat or at least know about it, right? Chocolate-coated wafer with it's catchy slogan "Have a break. Have a Kit Kat". And I guess most of us are only familiar with the standard flavours of KitKat, which is chocolate, caramel or white chocolate.

Well, the Land of Rising Sun begs to differ. I should've called it KitKat's Heaven instead. In the country where the competition for snacks and confectionery products is so fierce, coupled with very highly sophisticated and demanding customers, a company can't survive merely by producing standards products which customers could find everywhere else in the world. The competition is so fierce that companies would continuously rolling out new products once every few months, and it's not strange to find new products on the convenience stores every now and then, and the products you saw few months ago already disappeared from the shelves. Isn't it great to be a customer in Japan? :D

OK, go back to KitKat. Only in Japan you could find hundreds of variety of KitKats, some of which are really unthinkable. Have you ever wondered what Strawberry Cheesecake KitKat or Wasabi KitKat tastes like? Usually the company will launch new flavors based on the specialty of regions in Japan, and on seasonal or limited period basis. For example, Yubari Melon flavor is released limited in Hokkaido since it is a famous product from Yubari region in Hokkaido. Another example is Matcha (green tea) flavor is sold in Kyoto or Osaka region since Kyoto is famous for it's green tea. It's kinda hard to find those specialty products somewhere else, but if you're lucky you could find some in the Narita or Haneda airport.

From my last trip to Japan, I made it my mission to buy all specialty KitKat from every region that I visited. So this is what I ended up with (and this is not all)...XD

Japanese KitKats

As expected of Japanese products, they all have very nice and neat packaging, I had to think twice before throwing away the boxes..

The first place I visited was Kyushu prefecture which is located on the southern part of main island (Honshu) of Japan. I managed to find two specialty KitKat products there, Amaou Strawberry and Beni Imo (Purple Sweet Potato/Yam).

Amaou Strawberry has a very soft pink color with nice strawberry fragrant. It doesn't taste much like strawberry but I like the sweetness (but not very sweet) with faint hints of sourness, and the milky flavor of the chocolate.

Amaou Strawberry KitKat

 As its name, Purple Potato has a soft purple color, with distinct fragrant (I guess it's the smell of purple potato?). It has a stronger taste than Amaou Strawberry and definitely different than yam paste I usually find inside buns or bubble tea drinks. As with Amaou Strawberry it wasn't overly sweet and you will be left with nice milky chocolate flavor afterwards.

Beni Imo (Yam) KitKat

 Next destination was Hiroshima which is part of Chugoku region. The specialty KitKat I found here was Golden Citrus Blend, which is a blended flavor of Unshuu Mikan (satsuma mandarin), lemon and sudachi (a kind of Japanese citrus). I couldn't remember the taste well, but it has lemony taste, a bit of sourness of citrus and of course sweetness of milk chocolate.

Golden Citrus Blend Kitkat

From Hiroshima I travelled to Kansai area, which is where Kyoto and Osaka are situated. This is where the famous Matcha (green tea) KitKat is from. Kyoto is famous for its high quality matcha and everywhere you could find any products infused with green tea flavor, it is indeed a real heaven for green tea lovers. Green tea KitKat is perhaps the most famous Japanese KitKat flavor outside Japan and it would make a very nice souvenir from Japan. This particular green tea is called Uji Matcha which is produced from a small town called Uji, near Kyoto and it's known to produce some of the highest quality green tea in Japan.  And the taste indeed isn't disappointing, instead of faint flavor, you can actually taste the green tea and I think it's less sweet than the other flavors. So far it's my favourite. 

Uji Matcha (green tea) KitKat

Another variety of tea-flavored KitKat from Kyoto is Houji-cha, which has brown color instead of green due to roasting process.

Houji-cha KitKat

Yatsubashi is a well-known sweets from Kyoto, which is made of rice-flour, sugar and cinnamon. KitKat released a specialty Shogoin Yatsubashi flavored KitKat, which is one of famous yatsubashi makers from Kyoto.

Shogoin Yatsubashi KitKat

 After Kyoto, the final destination was Tokyo area. The easiest place to find the specialty KitKat is in the airport, I found many varieties in Haneda airport which carries quite a lot of flavors from Tokyo area. One specialty flavor from Tokyo is Kuromitsu (black honey) KitKat, which is a type of Japanese black sugar which is usually used in making Japanese traditional sweets. I found it too sweet for my taste, but nevertheless it was still quite OK.

Kuromitsu (black sugar) KitKat

 There are many interesting flavors from Yokohama, which is located just outside Tokyo. Annin-dofu (almond pudding) flavor is one of them.

Annin-dofu Kitkat

There are also Blueberry Cheesecake and Strawberry Cheesecake flavor! Can you imagine that? I don't even know if Yokohama is famous for their cheesecake. I guess the tastes are just OK, nothing much special about them. The usual sweetness, and maybe little bit of blueberry and strawberry taste. But still, I couldn't help getting all excited when seeing these interesting flavors. And look at the cute package! It is shaped like Mount Fuji, with its iced peak ^^

Blueberry Cheesecake KitKat

Strawberry Cheesecake KitKat

Below flavors don't belong to certain area in Japan, but they are still pretty interesting after all.
I found Sakura-flavored green tea KitKat. Sakura can be found incorporated into foods, especially during sakura season, but it's rather tasteless in my opinion. So, I can only taste the green tea flavor, but not as strong as the matcha one.

Sakura Green Tea KitKat

Other version of matcha KitKat is Air In Green Tea KitKat. I guess what it means is the green tea chocolate layer is infused with little air bubbles to make it more crunchy. There is also a layer of chocolate on the bottom. This one actually tastes pretty good, I found the wafer was more crunchy and the taste was nice.

Air In Green Tea KitKat

This one is Cookies and Cream flavor, which is made of Oreo biscuits thus we could find bits and pieces of Oreo chocolate inside the white chocolate layer. Not bad at all.

Cookies and Cream KitKat

Even though I quite enjoyed trying out all those flavors, some of them are quite similar in taste, in fact you could barely taste the difference between one flavor to another, except for their different smells. However, what I enjoyed most was the thrill of hunting those specialty flavor, especially knowing that this kind of stuffs could only be found in Japan and Japan only. And certainly they would make a very unique and exciting souvenir from Japan.