Random Picture #133

One of the KitKats which I eyeballed but never bought was the "hojicha" KitKat. For those who don't want to dash off to the linked Wikipedia page, hojicha is roasted green tea (that's why it's brown). My main issue with it is that it is a regional KitKat that comes in a big box of minis and I hated to have to buy a large number of them just to sample one. These are designed, incidentally, to be purchased by traveling business people and brought back to the office as a souvenir snack. That's why the boxes contain 12 minis and you can't get them as regular bars or smaller boxes of minis. If I hate the flavors of these, I've wasted a lot of money. I didn't work in an office when I started this blog, and I didn't have anyone on whom to fob off unwanted candy. My husband certainly wouldn't have touched a tea-flavored KitKat with a 10-foot pole!

Beyond my sense that I didn't want to squander my hard-earned yen on a dozen untested KitKats, there was also the fact that my readers either know the taste of hojicha or they don't. While many have tasted conventional green tea, this variation is not so common. There wouldn't be a whole lot of meaning to saying whether it was authentic or not. What is more, there are other reviews out there of this KitKat, though they frankly rather suck in the way I was afraid my review would suck if I'd done one. That is, they say it captures the flavor well and is therefore tasty.

Some of those reviews also suck because they rave about how insanely rare these are because they're regional (Kyoto), but that's not exactly true. Yes, they are not sold on every convenience store shelf in Tokyo, but they are sold at major train stations (e.g., Shinjuku), Narita airport, and at the Odaiba souvenir shop in which my picture was taken, not to mention some snack shops in Ueno's Ameyokocho. The truth is that, if you are in Japan and really want a regional KitKat, you never have to actually go to that region. There is no such thing as a "very rare" KitKat, except those that were issued as limited editions and sucked so badly (I'm looking at you lemon ginger ale KitKat) that they will never ever show up again.