Tokyo Regional Rum Raisin KitKat (and new releases)

Based on when I ran a contest to win a box of these particular KitKats and the timing on reviewing them, you might guess how high my level of enthusiasm is for them. Yes, I've had them around for weeks and only yesterday did I get around to breaking the seal on my box. It's not that I thought it was going to be bad or anything. I just didn't expect it to be particularly "good". I felt that the best I could hope for was that it would be "interesting" and not too disgustingly sweet. The question before me as I unwrapped a mini bar was whether or not Nestle Japan was going to manage to struggle over the very low bar that I was setting for this candy.

These smell vaguely fruity, which is slightly disturbing considering there is no sign of actual raisins in them. The bars are smooth white chocolate over nice, crispy wafers. The first thing that hits you is the very, very sweet white chocolate followed by the rum. The raisin comes through at the end on the initial taste, but builds in intensity as you eat more.

Since I don't drink alcohol, I don't know what rum tastes like. I asked my husband to try this. He took a bite, made a bad face, and said it was "too raisiny" and said essentially that it did not taste like rum to him. Personally, I think that rum raisin in general is one of the less approachable flavors, but that it can have its charms. Depending on the presentation, they can be like the guy everyone wants to talk to at the party, or the one that has people making excuses to escape to the bathroom or looking at their watch and talking about having to go home. This bar is somewhere in between. If this bar were the metaphorical equivalent of a guy at a party, I'd talk to this guy for a little while, but not for too terribly long. 

I got this box by asking my brother-in-law to pick it up at Narita airport on his way to visit family over the holidays. I was shocked to discover that it is being sold currently on Amazon for a pretty penny. You can procure it at less dear a price via J-Box. I caution those who may think this will be the most interesting thing since sliced bread that it mainly has novelty value. I expect to take months to eat twelve of these. It'll have to be one of those things where the spirit moves me for me to have one. It definitely would not satisfy an authentic chocolate craving, nor one for wafers. I don't regret asking my brother-in-law to pick it up, but mainly that's because I was keen to review it. I wouldn't buy it again.

And a few bits of news just for added fun:

Images from this point on are from Nestle Japan's web site.

Incidentally, Nestle Japan is currently marketing something they call a "KitKat chocolate lab". To the best of my ability to tell, Nestle has a deal where you can order a box of KitKats with a custom cover featuring a picture of your choice. You have to buy 10 boxes and each box has 3 mini bars. The price for this is very reasonable at 2310 yen ($25.66). In yen, that sounds a lot less expensive than it does in dollars.

This target for this isn't people who want their kids to appear on a box of candy. It is for people who want personalized favors such as those having weddings or special events. At 231 yen ($2.56) a box for what amounts to about half of what you get in a regular KitKat bar box for half that price, it is not good candy value for money, but it's rather nifty for a major brand to be a part of your personal event. I can't imagine people having the chance to customize a box of Snickers bars, for example. 

Nestle Japan seems to be shifting their marketing now from issuing a ton of weird KitKat flavors (which perhaps are not selling especially well) to packaging. In addition to the custom boxes in the aforementioned paragraphs, they are also releasing a box with a MOS Burger theme (available at the Japanese fast food joint, MOS burger) with a space to write a message, so perhaps these are meant to say, "I was picking up a fast food burger and I thought of you. Here's some consumer-level chocolate to express my feelings."

The red and white packaging.

Exam pack with messages imprinted on milk chocolate bars.

The "snake" packaging.

Picking over the Nestle Japan site, I could not find anything in the way of new flavors. There is a "red and white" bag of minis which has white and milk chocolate bars as well as an "exam pack" which has bars imprinted with encouraging messages for students preparing to take exams. Finally, there is a box with the Chinese year of the snake motif. It was directly targeted toward grandparents for distribution to their grandchildren at the New Year.

I'm wondering if, at least for a little while, the days of a plethora of funky KitKat flavors are over. I saw enough of the weird ones end up in massive bargain bins at snack discount shops like Okashi no Machioka to know that they probably did not sell all that well. Also, when novelty flavors are the norm, it's not surprising that the market loses interest. I know that I certainly lost interest as time went on. In terms of the cost to Nestle Japan, targeting markets based on packaging is probably a better idea. They can still hold the novelty market by focusing on regional flavors (which don't change often, and have appeal as they represent the flavors/foods of a particular area), but make most new releases target lifestyle rather than taste buds. 

Yawataya Mini KitKat

When I was given wasabi KitKats, I remember having a discussion about chocolate with one of my students in which I mentioned that putting chili in chocolate was fairly common in America. She was shocked, and grossed out, at the idea of this combination. Of course, she thought that including wasabi was also pretty weird, but accepted it as something reasonable as a regional variation for novelty value. This is one of those rare cases when a combination is actually a bit stranger in Japan than in the West. I've been reading about American releases of chili paired with chocolate on other blogs for years.

If you look at the top of this box, you can see that there is an old-timey picture in sepia (because that's how we can tell it's "old-timey"). This is because this flavor is supposed to represent what was popular in the Shinshu area during the Edo period. The origin of the hot pepper that is used is thought to be the Amazon basin rather than Japan. It's a transplanted flavor that is commonly called "togarashi" in Japan. Apparently, we have Columbus to thank for spreading it all over the globe, first to Europe and then to Asia. I doubt that makes up for all of the stuff the Spanish did to indigenous peoples nor does it make up for the fact that he is seen as discovering something which was hard to miss and probably was located by many explorers before him, but, hey, credit where it is due. He spread some hot peppers for us all to enjoy, especially the folks in Nagano (formerly the Shinshu area).

I picked this box of 5 mini KitKats up at the airport on my way out of Japan. I don't remember what I paid, but the retail price according to Nestle Japan's web site is 350 yen ($4.38). As is so often the case with these types of KitKat, it represents significantly bad value for the quantity, but one does not buy these for the volume, but rather the novelty. Each KitKat is two mini fingers (about the size of one and a third regular KitKat fingers) and has 67 calories.

When I opened the packet on these, I smelled a very pleasant bittersweet chocolate smell. I deeply inhaled the scent of the bar to try and detect any spiciness or hint of the chili pepper, but there was really no hint. My first bite yielded a mild, slightly sweet bittersweet chocolate flavor with the usual crispy wafer freshness of a KitKat. Only after this did I get a bit of heat on the tongue. Each subsequent bite was the same. It was a one-two punch with each flavor hitting quite distinctly.

This is a pretty nice tasting KitKat, largely because it is a slightly dark, bittersweet flavor which is not too sweet and pairs well with the wafer's crunch. However, the spicy portion seems almost superfluous. It does not detract from the chocolate, but it seems to add nothing. It's like eating a candy bar and then a little hot pepper alternatively. 

I think this works best as what it is, a novelty. If you're in the area (or at the airport) and want to take something back for your friends to try which won't make them gag, but will surprise them, this ought to fit nicely. The heat isn't so intense that someone will have a burning mouth. You'd have to be extremely sensitive to hot pepper to suffer for sampling this. Though I'll finish this box (slowly), I don't think there would really be any reason to buy this again. 

Vanilla KitKat Big Bar

There's a song by Barenaked Ladies which my husband has listened to many times in which about a million lyrics are disgorged in about 3 seconds that has a line which says something about vanilla being the finest of the flavors. As a kid, I would have vehemently disagreed with this, but, as an adult, I'm definitely much closer to agreeing with. I realize that one of the reasons "vanilla" was not good when I was a kid was that most of what was marketed at that time as "vanilla" was simply "absence of chocolate". An ice cream cone from the local "Tastee Freeze" was pretty much milk flavored with some artificial flavoring tossed in. It wasn't even an approximation of vanilla, but rather some sort of flavor that was supposed to enhance the consumption of a cone of white soft serve.

I think that since the days of my ancient childhood (I am all of 47, after all), consumers have gotten more sophisticated about vanilla. The price of vanilla beans would indicate there is some reason to believe that is so. They wouldn't be so expensive if demand were not fairly high. Nestle Japan decided that they were going to go "for real" in this vanilla KitKat bar and the package boasts the inclusion of real vanilla beans and 13% "vanilla paste". I was not sure at all what "vanilla paste" was, but a little research said that it is vanilla beans mixed with a thick sweet syrup made with sugar and a thickener. It's supposed to be good for making ice cream and is used in gourmet cooking. I may be a tad cynical, but I'm guessing this KitKat isn't using the highest quality vanilla bean paste in every bar.

I should note that this purchase was something my husband desired more than me. He's a great fan of white chocolate and I'm decidedly "so-so" on it as I generally find it too sweet. For that reason, I'm going to go with his rating on this bar instead of mine. I will share my impressions, however, since I can't really speak for his taste buds. I can only say that he said, "I really liked it!" I can also say that he ate all but the bite I took for review purposes by himself.

Regarding my feelings, it was, as expected, too sweet. There were nice little black flecks of vanilla beans in the white chocolate and the inner filling was brown (not white) so there wasn't an overload of white chocolate. The wafers were, as always, crispy and satisfying and the extra number of them in a Big Bar were welcome. However, there was a funky flavor to the white chocolate which overpowered any sense of the vanilla beans authenticity. I thought it tasted like chemicals, but it may simply be something about white chocolate that rubbed me the wrong way.

So, for me, this would be an "unhappy sumo" rating as I wouldn't have finished the bar. For my husband, it'd definitely be happy as he ate most of it in one sitting. If you want one, they're at most convenience stores for about 120 yen ($1.44) for now. Fans of really sweet bars should love it. Those like me, perhaps not so much.

White Adult Sweetness KitKat

I'm not sure what to make of the "adult" line of KitKats in Japan. When I ask my Magic 8 Ball about whether or not it is popular, it's saying that all signs point to "yes". In addition to the original less sweet semi-sweet release, there is currently a white chocolate and green tea version. On the other hand, I keep seeing this particular KitKat stacked in huge boxes and for a reduced price. Shortly after my husband and I paid full price (100 yen/$1.25) for this bar, I found it on sale for a mere 59 yen at Okashi no Machioka discount snack shop. I had seen the original version available for the same price not too long ago and I figure that the market must be flooded for it to show up in such a proverbial bargain bin. However, if it's not popular, why does Nestle Japan expand the line?

For white chocolate in particular, I'm quite pleased at the development of an reduced sweetness version as it tends to run on the cloyingly sweet side normally. I'm hoping that scaling back the sweetness will mean good things for the likes of me, though I honestly was not the one who chose this bar. It was my husband's choice. These days, he wears the pants in the family when it comes to buying KitKats. Normally, for big life purchases, we both have one leg in those pants, but I'm willing to defer to his wishes when it comes to consumer confectionary.

The main difference between this and the standard white chocolate KitKat offerings is that the filling is dark in color. I believe it is filled with finely crushed bitter chocolate cookies (like the dark portion of an Oreo cookie) rather than a super thin layer of cream, or at least that such cookies are mixed with the cream. This smells like standard white chocolate, which is to say like frosting and sugar. The first bite seems quite sweet initially, but then the filling mellows it out a bit and provides a flatter experience that mellows out the white chocolate. Overall, the mixture is far more palatable than plain most white chocolate offerings, but it lacks any serious depth of flavor. Still, as a KitKat with all of its textural delights, the balance is quite pleasant.

I would have liked this a bit better if there was some more profound bitterness to the interior of the bar, but I really have no complaints. That being said, I definitely wouldn't take this over a kinako or plain milk chocolate big bar, or even a regular milk chocolate KitKat. It's good, but not great. Note that this is a box of 3 mini bars of 69 calories each rather than two packages with longer fingers of around 100 calories. This new format is increasingly common for the standard KitKat in Japan and likely caters to the smaller snacking habits of Japanese consumers.

Tokyo Sky Tree Orange KitKat

First things first, I did not go to the Tokyo Sky Tree. I'm not especially interested in large quasi-phallic structures or radio towers. However, one can get Sky Tree souvenirs in a lot of adjacent locations including Ryogoku, home of sumo and the Japanese National Stadium (kokugikan) and Asakusa, home of a million tacky souvenirs for tourists. I picked this up in neither of those places. There's a particular branch of New Days convenience stores in Shinjuku which carries a lot of regional sweets for some reason and this was perched on a top shelf, towering above all others.

The truth is that I didn't choose to buy this. It was 525 yen ($6.76) and I knew that was going to be a premium price. It's very often the case in Japan that you purchase something in a large box and find that the contents in no way reflect the box size. I'm not talking about "contents may have settled", but simply packaging inside of packaging which is smaller. In the case of this box, one might expect a neat row of a  multitude of minis, but it's just three boxes of regular KitKats. Since the average price of a regular KitKat is 100-120 yen, that means I'd pay about 360 yen for the same quantity if it didn't come in a Sky Tree box. 

The odd thing about this is that the box says across the top that this is the "#1 flavor" and is very popular. While I can see how orange chocolate would be quite popular, I have to wonder why there are constant iterations of strawberry KitKats if orange is the "#1". You'd think they'd spin out more orange versions. I question your authenticity, Nestle Japan, and the veracity of your claims. And while I'm at it, I may also question your parentage, pedigree, and the stuff you've written on your résumé. I'm also dubious of your claims of virginity, but that's not something I'm prepared to investigate more closely.

This smells like fake orange flavoring, though not in a bad way. It's not like baby aspirin orange, but more like orange Tootsie Roll Orange. The bars are milk chocolate based and the orange flavoring tends to hit second after the chocolate. It comes across at first as a burst of an orange juice flavor, but quickly tapers away into the aforementioned fake orange flavor. Since this is a KitKat, it's got all of the same fresh, crispy wafer goodness you can expect from any reasonably good KitKat.

This was nice enough, but it isn't what I'd call incredibly "more-ish". I wouldn't have purchased three of these for sure, but I also not have regretted having one on hand for sampling. As a novelty, or for someone who really loves orange chocolates even when they're not the most realistic in flavoring, this is pretty good. I enjoyed it enough to eat what I've got (slowly), but I wouldn't buy it again.

KitKat Air In White

My husband recently went home to visit his family and take care of some business in the U.S. Being your faithful snack blogger, I remained in Japan all alone so that I might purchase junk food and write about it. Okay, you know that is a big, fat lie. I stayed here because the fuel surcharges are so expensive that we couldn't afford two tickets to paradise. The point is that he brought me back 6 boxes of meringue cookies from Trader Joe's. For reasons I can't explain because they go beyond the love of crispy, marshmallowy cookie goodness, I am crazy for meringue. I know a lot of people find them chalky, too sweet or lacking in flavor, but I adore them.

If you've ever made meringue cookies (and I haven't since it requires running the oven at low temps for a long time and I'm so impatient), you know that it is made by beating air and sugar into egg whites then baking them. It struck me that eating something which incorporates air is really paying money for nothing, yet I will still most likely gobble down all of my Trader Joe's vanilla meringue cookies in record time. It does beg the question of why something should be more desirable with air when it is perfectly fine without it. Of course, I speak of the KitKat, not meringue, which absolutely requires air to be anything more than just egg. The answer to why there's air in these KitKats is obvious to me: Nestle Japan is out of any other ideas.

This is a box of mini KitKats weighing in at about 40 calories per and each is about half the length of a single finger, but a little wider. There are 7 in the box (lucky 7? too cheap for 8?) and they cost 150 yen ($1.98) at convenience stores. That makes them on the expensive side, but pretty much normal for this type of special release.

These smell rather different than usual KitKats, but it is hard to pin down why. Since there is both white and darker chocolate, you get two different tastes and better depth of flavor. The base is bittersweet and the top is buttery white chocolate. The wafers only lend texture and crunch, and less than usual because of the need to make a higher "air" portion on the top caused a few wafers to be sacrificed. Sometimes airy chocolate has a bit of a crispy feel to it, but it really doesn't seem to be doing much here besides lowering the total calories.

I liked this a lot because the chocolate flavors came together well. A little more crispy wafer would have been good, but I'm not complaining. I ate two of these at one time and it didn't seem incredibly sweet in the build-up. For any consumer-level chocolate, and one with a white chocolate component, that's pretty impressive.

Though this isn't the most bizarre or exciting KitKat Nestle Japan has come up with, it's still pretty tasty and is the first one that I think competes favorably with the original bar. In fact, I'd say it beats it in terms of the chocolate, but falls just a bit short on the wafers. The air aspects absolutely does nothing for it. However, I'd definitely buy this again.

Random Picture #79

Japan doesn't "do" Halloween, though over the years I have been here, it's been heading in that direction.  The displays of Halloween candy are growing larger, though the candy doesn't tend to be especially positioned as Halloween flavors but rather just attractive and colorful packaging of the same old releases. There is an exception to that, and it's the pictured Japanese KitKat above. This is a pumpkin cheesecake variety. Clearly, anything pumpkin would seem to be simpatico with the spirit of the occasion.

I'm torn about trying this. I want to try it, but am reluctant to buy a whole big bag of it just for sampling. There's every chance that this is Japanese pumpkin (kabocha) flavored rather than a more American pumpkin pie experience. This isn't really a problem for me as I adore kabocha, but my husband dislikes it and the prospect of eating a whole bag of mini bars alone (it'll take over a month) is what is holding me back. Still, I may weaken and give in. We'll see.

Annin Dofu and Blueberry Cheesecake KitKats (Regional)

I vowed a long time ago not to seek out the regional KitKats nor to pay a premium price for them. I'm sure all of my readers will appreciate my faithfulness to this promise which has absolutely nothing to do with them and only deprives them of content they may desire. That being said, if a regional version drops in my lap at a low price, I'm not going to walk away. I may be cheap, but I'm not that cheap... yet.

My husband and I were taking a sweaty summer evening stroll and it was not the good kind of sweaty which involves inappropriate activity in a public space. It was the usual bath in a humid boggy atmosphere kind of sweaty. Anyway, he suggested that we pop into the Village Vanguard to look around at their usual array of imported food and Japanese snack oddities. It's always good to pop into one of their shops and listen to loud music that is supposed to let the patrons know how hip they are and  prime the rest of us for hearing aids in our elder years. They've been selling regional KitKats for awhile, and I guess they finally gave up on moving them so they reduced the price by half. Instead of 840 yen a box, they were 420 yen ($5.47). To this, we said, "sold", as this positions the price such that they cost almost the same as regular KitKats.

White KitKats are white. 

My husband chose the blueberry cheesecake because he'd had it before and liked it. I reviewed it before, and didn't much care for it, but figured I'd give it a try to see if this Kanto-Koushinetsu regional version was different. It turned out that it wasn't. It was exactly the same mixture of extremely subdued blueberry flavor paired with too pungent cheese flavor and overly sweet white chocolate. Each mini bar is 69 calories of disappointment, at least for me. My husband actually enjoys them, so it's all down to your tastes.

It was my adventurous spirit that compelled me to buy the annin dofu variety, which is labeled as a "Yokohama" edition. I've seen it in a lot of shops in Tokyo though, so they aren't doing a very good job of keeping it from wandering into other territories. Annin dofu is an almond jelly dessert which is actually made with apricot seeds. The Wikipedia page says that it is supposed to taste like almonds, but to me annin dofu desserts taste more like a funky fruit cocktail. That is pretty much how this tasted to me, like a very sweet non-standard fruit cocktail. It's a little unusual, but I liked it. I don't know that I'd buy it again if I had to buy a dozen mini bars at once, but I might occasionally pick up a single mini bar or a regular one if I was in the mood for something different. I wasn't over the moon about it, but I liked it fine. It gets a very marginal:

Random Picture #75

The Japanese KitKat scene has been a wasteland littered with tumbleweeds of uninspired options. The latest entry is just another cactus popping up out of the ground amongst a gaggle of nondescript cacti. These are "puff" big bars which take the standard milk chocolate big bar and stir some rice puffs into the coating. That's it. <yawn> Offering this unimaginative creation on top of a cookies and cream version and a strawberry hazelnut one that was 95% strawberry is going to seriously undercut the image of Japanese KitKats as wild and weird.

Strawberry Hazelnut Petit KitKat

I swear not to buy another strawberry KitKat, but then here I am. I bought the bitter strawberry one, and now this one. In my defense, I was at work and wanted something small and sweet for a pick-me-up and the petit KitKats fit the bill. Also, this has hazelnuts, and I am a card carrying fan of Nutella and all things which mix filberts with any sort of chocolate. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty lame defense to me, too. I admit it, it's hard to resist a new KitKat flavor, even a lame one.

I found this at Family mart for 158 yen ($1.99). It's absurdly expensive for such as small portion. There are only 6 in the box and each is about the size of 1/3 of a single KitKat finger. Given the size, it's no surprise that each individually wrapped serving is only 25 calories. This compares favorably to similar consumer chocolates like  Hershey'sKiss (which is also 25 per). There was also a "cookies and cream" variety on offer at the same time, but I passed on it for the time being as it was even more boring than this one. If it had been "cookies and hazelnut", you'd be getting two reviews instead of one.

When I tried this at first, it was on the heels of sampling some jalepeno chicken thing my husband bought at KFC. No, I don't like KFC, but I took a few bites to try it (loved the spicy heat, hated the greasy chicken). Unfortunately, I think that affected my ability to detect the subtle flavor of the hazelnut. Spice-fried taste buds don't have good sensitivity. The second sampling revealed just the tiniest bit of hazelnut. It mainly served to cut through some of the cloying sweetness of the strawberry flavor.

Other than the vaguest hint of hazelnut, this is your standard white-chocolate-based strawberry KitKat. It's too sweet, the strawberry isn't very realistic, though at least it's not "perfumey" as these things can sometimes be. I wouldn't buy this again, but I'm happy to finish the box because the sweetness can't build up to a strong level when you're eating so little at once. This isn't bad, but really isn't all that impressive either.

KitKat Bitter Strawberry (Big Bar)

When I spied this newest KitKat, I said to myself: "Self, you promised me that you wouldn't buy anymore damn strawberry KitKats because they are, more often than not, cloying and fake... and they aren't really very different. Self, you know that strawberry KitKats are the lazy wankers at Nestle Japan just churning out a minor variation rather than taxing their grey matter." Then, I realize I shouldn't talk to myself so much and buy the damn KitKat anyway because it's only 120 yen ($1.50) and probably won't be in the convenience stores forever. Incidentally, this "conversation" occurred in 7-11, where I bought the bar from an utterly indifferent cashier. The experience nearly brought a tear to my eye. It's  the type of service that one gets back home from teenagers working late shifts.

The first thing I noticed about this big bar was that it has been divided into three sections for better portion control. This made me quite happy since I never eat a whole one at once, and actually tend to eat only one-fourth at a time. This made it easy to divide by snapping it along the pre-scored points. I thought it might break apart in a jagged fashion, but it broke clean. I give Nestle Japan points for good product design.

Unlike some white- and milk-chocolate-based KitKats which are strawberry-flavored, this smells good when you open the package. You get mainly a dark chocolate scent with just a whiff of strawberry as opposed to an overwhelming fake strawberry scent. The truth is that there were two reasons that I gave in on another strawberry version because of the promise of this being dark chocolate and feeling that would cut back on the often overly sweet strawberry flavors. The other reason was that my husband was interested in trying it to so I knew that I wouldn't be responsible for eating it all if it was nasty.

Fortunately, this was a pretty good variant on a KitKat. The Big Bar attributes, like a firm and generous chocolate coating with good snap and plentiful amounts of wafer, were intact and delightful as always. The blend of dark chocolate and strawberry was also well-balanced. So, score a "win" for Nestle in this regard. Note that the dark chocolate is not a high percentage and is more for those who are on the sissy side when it comes to such things. It's not in the least like milk chocolate, but lacks any deep bitterness.

While I can't say that this bar is the end-all and be-all of KitKats, I can say that it quite enjoyable. Dark chocolate lovers who prefer their bitterness on the milder side should give it a shot. I'm not sure that I'd recommend forking over a premium price for this, but I would say it's worth what I paid for it.

KitKat Zunda

The earliest charity items for victims of the Great Tohoku Earthquake were T-shirts. Other items are sluggishly following at their heels and these KitKats are Nestle Japan's entry. The sale of each bar will add 10 yen (12 cents) to the Japanese Red Cross's coffers. It's a pretty nice gesture, and I'm sure that if these sell well, a tidy sum could be donated.

These bars are unusual in their distribution because they are a non-standard flavor of KitKat, but on sale at supermarkets. Usually the "specialty" KitKats are mainly available for a limited time in convenience stores, but there was a huge display of them at my local Inageya supermarket. The odd thing was that they are 128 yen ($1.56) at the market, but only 108 yen ($1.32) at Family Mart convenience stores (click the picture above to load a large version which shows the respective displays with their price differences). I'm guessing that someone at Family Mart decided to go with the standard KitKat price rather than some sort of suggested retail price, but that is pure speculation. I'm rather at a loss to explain it, but clearly you're better off buying these from them.

Zunda is mashed green soy beans (or raw edamame) and this particular cuisine is a specialty of the northern Tohoku area. It makes sense that they'd choose something associated with the region the sales of the bar are meant to help. It's also an interesting choice for a KitKat. In fact, it's probably one of the more curious options that have come along in a long time.

In terms of flavor, this is a white-chocolate-based bar and very sweet. Since the flavor is "green" soybeans, it's no shock that the first bite carries a grassy flavor that gives you that telltale sense that you're munching on something with chlorophyll. The soy bean aspect is very mild and by the end of one finger, you pretty much are eating a sweet white chocolate KitKat with a mild soy and grassy aftertaste. Even my husband, who is not a fan of soy or edamame, didn't find this unpalatable because the taste of the main element was relatively mild.

This is an okay KitKat, and the flavor choice is a pretty enticing one. I wish I could say it was the bee's knees and that everyone should run out and stock up on a load of these before they go away. However, this just isn't that incredible. It's moderately interesting, but rather sweet and mild. If you can pick one up in Japan, I'd say do it to satisfy curiosity, but I wouldn't buy it more expensively from an importer. If you want to help the victims of the tsunami and quake, donate directly to the Japanese Red Cross because it'll probably mean more than 10 yen from the sale of this bar anyway.

Tiramisu KitKat Mini (Quick Review)

Thanks to the earthquake, I'm going to start a new type of review. No, I'm not looking to dash off a quick review between tremors or before the bookshelf crashes down on me. The truth is that the earthquakes have lessened in frequency as of late, much to my great relief. However, economic circumstances as a result of the quake have reduced my husband's income and I have taken on a part-time job to make up for some of the shortfall.

Working two more days per week (which leaves me working 5 days a week like "normal" people) means I have less time to write reviews and other blog posts. I find myself faced with a choice and that is to either reduce the frequency of posting or to write some shorter reviews once or twice a week as necessary. Fortunately, I've also found that there are some snacks which require very little in the way of commentary anyway so it's all for the good. In fact, KitKats are ideally suited to short reviews since there is little to say about them beyond what they taste like. They're all the same format (wafer + chocolate of some ilk) and require no history or research. So, thanks to the Great Tohoku Earthquake, you will now receive "quick (aka brief) reviews". You may thank the shifting tectonic plates at your earliest convenience.

I saw these tiramisu KitKats for the first time a few days ago at New Days convenience store. They were being sold as part of a medium size bag with a "half and half" assortment. That is, half plain chocolate KitKats and half tiramisu flavor. I've still got plain mini KitKats on hand and didn't want to spend more for something which I didn't want half of so I cased the local 7-11's until I found one with a box of single minis on sale for 42 yen (52 cents). That allowed me to sample this without the delicious chocolate ballast. Note that the box I bought this from was pretty decimated, and only the second 7-11 had them for sale in this fashion. If you want to try a single bar, you may have to search around a bit for the right shop.

The advertising on the package says "cheese plus coffee harmony". I'm not so sure anyone feels coffee pairs well with "cheese", though this is supposed to be mascarpone, which is relatively bland. This is supposed to be .2% coffee, and 1.2% cheese, which I guess makes it 98.6% chocolate and wafer. It's the average body temperature of chocolate, I guess.

The white chocolate-based bar (the bar is white, I'm not taking pictures of KitKats anymore as they all look the same) smells strongly of coffee. There's also some weird artificial flavor that reminds me ever so slightly of rubber which I imagine is the cheese. On the second bite, this develops more into a somewhat gouda-like flavor. I wish I could say I was surprised that the Japanese version of a tiramisu would include a flavor which is too pungent, but it's actually what I expected. You learn a few things after a few too many experiences with "cheese" sweets flavored like cheddar instead of cream cheese.

This is a bizarre little bar. It has complex flavor which comes through with depth and intensity. The coffee flavor is bitter, strong, and well-balanced by the sweetness. The cheese flavoring tastes different with every bite and by the third bite vanishes into the coffee. The first bite was rather unpleasant, the second strange, and the the third pretty good. It's hard to render a verdict based on this experience but I'd recommend curiosity seekers who have access give it a try, especially if they like coffee. I wouldn't recommend, however, that you  buy the whole bag of minis nor that you pay an expensive import price. As a curiosity, this is okay, but I wouldn't buy it again.

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Some readers may have noticed that there haven't been many KitKat reviews as of late. The truth is that the Japanese KitKat scene has been exceptionally boring. The most recent release was a fudge chocolate and almond one which was clearly a fusion of the bitter almond release and the kuchidoke KitKat. The flavor combination sounds nice enough, but is pretty humdrum.

Beyond that, the regular KiKat has been issued as three mini bars in the same size box rather than two packets of two longer fingers. Woohoo for innovation. :-p There has also been a green tea mini "assortment" (pictured at top) which is two marginally different tasting types of green tea KitKats. I haven't tried them, but I'd be shocked if they tasted greatly different than the ones I've sampled before. Finally, there are some "big little KitKats" on the market in orange, strawberry, and regular flavors. Frankly, the strawberry KitKats are so over-released that I cringe when I see one show up in yet another lame variation.

So, I'm afraid that Nestle Japan appears to have lost its imagination for the time being and that explains the lack of reviews. When something interesting comes along, I'll cover it. Until then, I'm not wasting my calories. ;-)

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(Click this picture to see a larger version)

You can tell that "it's that time of year" again in Japan when the KitKat releases and displays start revving up. "That time" means that kids are taking or have recently taken entrance exams for various educational institutions and Nestle Japan is pushing to get parents to buy celebratory or encouraging candy bars. I took a picture of this display at NewDays convenience store and, oddly, it doesn't feature anything new. There are "gokaku" mugs with KitKats and instant coffee, "adult sweetness" KitKats, plain big bars and regular KitKats, mikan and strawberry Big Little KitKats, and a bag of white and milk chocolate minis.

The display does include something I personally hadn't seen before and that is a "present". If you buy two KitKats, you can get a "clear file" showing a young woman holding up a KitKat amongst a frame of cherry blossoms. This one says, "I'm going to campus", as if she passed her exam and is going to attend the college of her parents' dreams, but I can't tell if it was written in an empty speech bubble by the staff of NewDays or if that's what all of these say. At any rate, I didn't get one because I don't need more useless office supplies, but those in Japan who are KitKat collectors may want to march on over to NewDays while they last.

Otoshidama KitKat ("saku saku up")

This review is a bit of a cheat in one way, and an authentic review in another. Some months ago, Nestle Japan altered the basic KitKat saying that it was more "saku saku" or "crispier". My husband asked me if I was going to review it to see if it, indeed, was noticeably changed. I told him that it seemed like too incidental a change to bother with, though I am intrigued at the idea of a KitKat which may focus more on the wafers and less on the chocolate.

We were at the post office several weeks ago, and he saw the KitKat pictured above for sale behind the counter. This is the regular enhanced crispiness KitKat, but it has a special envelope attached to it for "otoshidama" or money given at New Year's holidays. This is a nice way for grandma or grandpa to give their grandchildren their usual gift cash. I'm guessing they are sold at the post office in order to catch the eye of folks who are coming in to send off their "nengajo" or New Year's postcards. Note that there is a rabbit on the envelope because next year ("tomorrow" for me as of this posting) is the Chinese year of the bunny. I'm guessing this is the year in which the Easter Bunny, Peter, and the white rabbit were all brought into being.

The KitKat itself is your regulation milk chocolate version. The only questions about it are whether or not it actually is crispier than the previous version and if it has a different general composition. The answer is, "yes", it is crispier. However, it is not crispier in an earth-shattering way. I don't know exactly what changed, but the sense I get is that the wafers may be toasted longer or their general has been recipe altered. Whatever the case may be, they are crunchier and make a louder sound in your head when you chew them.

Obviously, I'd buy this again if I wanted a KitKat. I love regular KitKats with their balance of wafers and milk chocolate. I just rarely get a chance to eat them with so many new things on my plate at any given time.

Happy New Year to all of my readers!

Little Big KitKat Mikan

I'm going to ask my readers to return to those less than thrilling days of yesteryear when they were young and naive and their mommies carted them off to the doctor for rounds of various inoculations. I realize that's something that may become a thing of the past with all of the controversy about vaccinations causing all sorts of problems such that people would rather their kids had polio or whatever. As a childless person, I'm really not too fussed about how other people deal with their off-spring unless they're kicking the back of my seat in a movie or on a plane.

Getting back to the point though, we all remember how dreadful the experience could be when young and helpless and forced to be skewered on our scrawny, tender arms with what I'm sure was a two-foot needle. The only "good" thing about it was that you'd often get a lollipop at the end of the ordeal. Well, it was best if you got orange or grape. Cherry would suffice in a pinch, and getting lemon or lime just was adding insult to the injured appendage that took the shot.

The reason I want you to remember those cheap lollipops that you got after being stabbed by a well-meaning health professional is that you'll need to draw on the sense memory of what those cheap, clear orange lollies smelled and tasted like to understand the essence of this KitKat. It's as if someone either stirred the milk chocolate with one of those suckers or crushed them up to sandwich between the wafers. Either way, it's the essence of a cheap, chemical orange flavor which is a bit too intense. With the milk chocolate, it comes across as an orange tootsie roll on steroids. On the bright side, these are crispier than usual KitKats.

This wasn't appalling or anything, but I wouldn't buy it again and had I known what it was going to taste like, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Adding orange to chocolate is something that needs some care and finesse. Real citrus flavors in the right balance make for something immensely delicious, but fake flavors in too high a quantity spoil the effect.

If you'd like to have one of these despite my low opinion of it, you can find them at convenience stores now. I got mine at NewDays for 120 yen. The only bright side is that there are 10 little morsels in the bag and each is only 22 calories so you can spread the "love" amongst your friends, family or coworkers should you live to regret your purchasing decision.