Japan 2012: KitKat & Mentos

One of the great things about travelling around Japan is discovering the different regional flavours that are often taken by food companies and incorporated into some of the most popular snack items.  Because of Japan’s gift giving culture, you can see that they try to create unique items to entice consumers.  One in particular is the KitKat chocolate bar.  In North America, the typical milk chocolate, dark chocolate, caramel and white chocolate versions can be found.  The Japanese take this popular chocolate to the next level – I found green tea, orange/lemon and the most interesting one I found yet, sakura mochi flavour.  Sakura mochi is a sakura leaf wrapped sticky rice confection with a red bean paste centre.  Imagine this in a KitKat – crazy!  But when I did try it, it really did taste like I was eating the real thing.  They were able to capture the sakura flavour!  Another popular candy, mentos, also likes to take local flavours and incorporate them into their candy.  I was able to find pink grapefruit, “fresh” cola and ume (japanese plum).