Crazy Kit Kats

Japanese Kit Kats are pretty famous around the internet for having surprising and shall we say less than appetizing flavors in the minds of most foreigners. I think everyone has heard of green tea Kit Kat, and I once even found a site that reviewed cheese-flavored Kit Kat when I was living back in Canada. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I haven’t seen any of the cheese ones around, but I have come across some flavors that I feel must be reviewed.

One of the more common flavors I’ve come across is strawberry. It’s available in most convenience stores and I’ve seen it in grocery stores too, so I’m guessing there’s a pretty large group of consumers who typically enjoy it.

The strawberry taste is surprisingly strong, and it reminds me a lot more of a yogurt-dipped granola bar than a chocolate bar. I was expecting white chocolate with cheap strawberry flavoring, so I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

A less-than-common flavor that really caught my eye is the passion fruit variety. I have no idea what thought process would lead to passion fruit Kit Kat, and the packaging honestly isn’t that enticing:

There’s something very off-putting about seeing a yellow Kit Kat bar in my opinion…I’m not sure why the strawberry one doesn’t bother me, but it may have something to do with the fact that I’ve lived in Japan for far too long. Unlike the strawberry kind, the passion fruit flavor is something of a rarity, at least in my neck of the woods; I found it for the first time a few weeks ago in a 7-11 way across town from my apartment.

Unfortunately, the taste doesn’t give me much motivation to go that far to get one. The passion fruit Kit Kat basically tastes like someone wrapped a stick of juicy fruit around a plain vanilla wafer. It’s as weird as I assumed it would be. But interestingly enough, one stick of passion fruit Kit Kat has only 67 calories, three less than a stick of strawberry. So if you’re on a diet, maybe this is the one for you.

And finally we come to the crowning jewel of my collection: the seasonal pumpkin pudding Kit Kat!

I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it, but yes, this is really a thing. I don’t think this one’s super widely available since I need to travel just as far to get it than I do to get the passion fruit flavour. Additionally, this kind is only available in the Halloween candy section of the grocery star in large bags, so you can’t get an individual pumpkin pudding Kit Kat bar. What you get instead are tiny, ‘fun-sized’ bars, which come in a variety of Halloween-themed packaging. Some bars have jack-o-lantern packages, some have cute ghosts:

Honestly, the pumpkin pudding ones taste great. The pumpkin spice is definitely strong enough to taste without being overpowering and the bar’s unusual taste makes it a fun adventure to eat. Also, a stick of pumpkin pudding Kit Kat only 68 calories, for those who care.

If I can find a green tea Kit Kat around town I’ll try one out, and I definitely plan to take a look at the cherry blossom flavored Kit Kats that come out in the spring (yes, really). For the sake of my waist, though, I had better end this snack review here!

Hallokitty

It’s Halloween, and you know what that means! Hello Kitty Donuts! Well, maybe only in Japan.

Here in Japan there’s a huge donut shop chain called Mister Donut that’s something like Tim Horton’s back in Canada. You can get not only donuts and coffee, but bowls of noodles and little meat pastries as well, each of which earns you points on a point card. If you get enough points you can cash them in for prizes. Yesterday I got a little ceramic tea cup that I’m sure will help in a month or two when I’m caught in the clutches of Japan’s bitter winter:

Mister Donut also has some kind of tie-in deal going on with Hello Kitty; if you buy six donuts you get them packed in a little cardboard haunted house with a stuffed Hello Kitty dressed as a witch and holding a kitty jack-o-lantern. I can’t lie, it’s pretty cute.

The donuts themselves are worth getting, even without the cutesy feline plushie to sweeten the pot, though. There are a couple of different Hello Kitty jack-o-lantern donuts available, one with strawberry icing and one with pumpkin pudding icing. Both even come with a tiny pink bow made out of chocolate!

The Kitty donuts actually aren’t that sweet. They have a kind of cookie or pretzel consistency that goes well with the sugary toppings but isn’t at all overbearing. I especially like the pumpkin one.

One of Mister Donut’s standard options is a pastry that’s something like a crueller cut in half, filled with white icing, and partially dipped in chocolate. This Halloween, they’re offering a pumpkin variety with orange icing the middle and dipped in orange chocolate that’s covered in purple and black sprinkles. It’s one of the best in my opinion.

The most famous of Mister Donut’s selections is the ‘pon de ring’, which looks something like a ring of donut holes stuck together. They’ve usually got a plain option and a chocolate option, but once again they’ve done away with tradition in favour of the orange icing and sprinkles. I’m not a huge fan of the pon de ring personally, but it’s nice to see more Halloween spirit.

One of my favourite shapes is actually the little ghost. It’s a plain, cream-filled donut with strawberry icing and a face made out of milk chocolate. How could anyone dislike that?

There are other seasonal donuts besides the Halloween ones, too. Here in Japan a lot of people love chestnuts and chestnut flavoured foods around fall and winter, so Mister Donut has come out with a maron (chestnut) cream donut dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with sesame seeds. I tried this one a few weeks ago and it was honestly so sweet that it made my entire mouth hurt. Definitely not planning on trying that one again!

Halloween really isn’t a traditional Japanese holiday, so it’s kind of interesting to see how deeply into the Halloween spirit a lot of the people and companies get. It seems like in some ways Halloween is a bigger deal here in Kudamatsu than it ever is in my hometown. Being surrounded by so much festive spirit, I think I’m more excited about Halloween than I have been in years!