Japanese Candy

In Japan, the English word candy doesn’t conjure the same image it does in America.  For some reason, they only associate it with the stuff we call hard candy.  No, I’m not talking about drugs.  I’m talking about the stuff that old ladies give out in handfuls on Halloween (unless your neighborhood granny is a drug dealer), the kind of crystalline sugar rocks that chip your teeth but stick to them too.  That being said, there seems to be a dearth of American candy bar brands over here.  They have Snickers and Hershey Bars, sometimes, but pretty much none of the other stuff.

Nonetheless, their convenience store candy shelves are just as brimming as ours, not with Milky Ways, Twix Bars, and Caramellos, but with Kat Kat’s and Crunky.  Somehow, the candy industry over here is undergoing some sort of revolution similar to what happened to the restaurant industry from “Demolition Man.”  In case you’ve never seen the movie (shocking!), I’ll spoil it for you: in the future all restaurants have become Taco Bell.  Fortunately for the world, Taco Bell doesn’t exist in Japan, but in the meantime Kit Kat and Crunky are monopolizing their own corner of the market.  I don’t have any photos of strange Kits Kats at the moment (I’ll get some, I promise), but I have captured one of Crunky.

What is Crunky, you ask?  According to the box, “Crunch Chocolate: A fine combination of crunchy malt-puffs and chocolate.”  This one happens to be flavored “Soft Cream Koubou,” which is spelled with the same kanji as construction worker.  I can only assume this means men have to die for the production of each candy bar.  More photos to follow later this week.  ^_^

~ by Ryan on July 11, 2009.