One of my to do items on my last trip to Tokyo was to come home with a variety of Japanese Kit Kat chocolate bars. There were a few different places I wanted to check to get them, but my first stop was the Kit Kat Chocolatory store in the Seibu basement food floor at Ikebukuro Station. I'll say this right now, the quest for all of the different flavours of Kit Kat isn't easy and the konbini will always have the regular chocolate and maybe one or two of the other flavours with green tea being pretty common. However, the other flavours turn up mainly in Japanese souvenir stores (ones with food and snacks, not crafts and ornaments).
Kit Kat Chocolatory in IkebukuroThis store is located at the south end of the north section of the basement food floor of the Seibu department store at the station. There is a hallway that runs between the two sections of the food floor and you'll see the Kit Kat store through the window. It is a slightly larger and fancier food counter there in a corner, but it sells the gourmet Kit Kats you cannot get anywhere else other than a Kit Kat Chocolatory store.
I had read a lot about this store and wanted to grab a few of these to try. At the moment, one of their deluxe products are the I Love Fruits (fruit flavoured Kit Kats). They are like 2 dollars for a little stick (much like buying fine chocolates for the price). If the line isn't long, I highly recommend picking some up if you are in the area. Remember, Ikebukuro has the Evangelion Store, the Pokemon Store Mega Tokyo, the flagship branch of Animate, Shonen Jump J World, and the Durarara the anime is set here.
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The Kit Kat Chocolatory. Nicely themed. There is even a Kit Kat chandelier. I arrived 15 minutes at 9:45, before it opened and there were only 5 people in line in front of me. |
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Nifty display |
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A couple of the deluxe Kit Kat types. |
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The more regular gift boxes. |
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They have these nicely packaged I Love Fruit Kit Kats theare are about $15 for a box of 10 (can't remember the exact price). You get 2 strawberry, 2 blueberry, 2 raspberry, two coconut, and two passion fruit. |
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I picked up a little of everything. The I Love Fruit bars are tasty, but only the raspberry and passion fruit had a really strong fruit flavours. The four red boxes I bought each contain 4 double bars of one of strawberry, ginger, green tea, and sakura. The dark brown bars were raspberry. The sakura green tea has a bit of a tart undertone that is quite pleasant with the green tea. The ginger is also very good without any overpowering flavours. |
Other Varieties of Kit KatI also looked for the many other varieties of Kit Kat as Japan has many regional types of Kit Kat too, but wasn't really too successful. Rum Raisin seemed to be more common for some reason. I even tried the specialty souvenir stores in Tokyo Station near Character Street / Ramen Street by the Calbee+ store and no luck this time. I had heard they had gift sets of the regional Kit Kats from all over Japan, but there weren't any when I was there. There were some of the other types though.
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I found these green tea and the Easter apple/pumpkin Kit Kats in these bags (12 little twin bars each) at a supermarket. The apple/pumpkin are nice with a nice little hit of apple juice flavour. |
Over at Odaiba, in Aqua City, I did find a big stash of Kit Kats in a souvenir store up on the 4th floor near the Fuji TV Noitamina store.
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Have to buy these by the big box unfortunately. 1500 yen for a box (not bad for the price) |
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Strawberry and Sakura |
I pretty much stopped looking for Kit Kats but then found them on the way out of the country in Terminal 1 by the Air Canada gates at Narita Airport. Go figure, but they had a great selection of small boxes for sale!
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Love this Strawberry Cheesecake Mount Fuji Box. The Kit Kats tasted like a strawberry milkshake and were quite delicious! |
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Red bean |
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Sakura |
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Wasabi! |
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Rum Raisin |
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Green tea. |
Thus ends my quest for Kit Kats.
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