This is just my personal observation with no data but AFAICT Kit Kat is *mostly" for tourists here in Japan. If there's an obsession it seems to me it's tourists buying them. I could be wrong but I've never personally seen Japanese people buying them (of course they must, just saying that I haven't noticed).

I just walked over to 3 convenience stores that have a large candy selections. The 7/11 had no Kit Kats out of 80 chocolate based candies on display. There were also non-chocolate based candies as well as other snacks. The 2 Family Marts, one had a single "maple" flavor. The other had a chestnut flavor but similar to the 7/11 those were 1 of 50-90 other chocolate candies.

That said since you're more likely to be a vistor if you're reading this, if you want to go crazy for Kit Kats there's a few of "high end" Kit Kat stands you can bring back more rare $4-$5 per stick Kit Kats (probably mentioned in the article)

https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/inbound/en/chocolatory/store.htm...

You can see examples here

https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/inbound/en/chocolatory/product.h...

or better pictures here

https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/chocolatory/product/

I saw a very popular seasonal KitKat stand within Seibu department store when I was visiting Japan, and I didn't notice any other tourist-looking people around. Is it possible that it's just not popular in the convenience store market, but is more popular in competition with all of the higher-end sweets people were constantly giving me, talking about, and eating while I was there?

Maybe magic of department store. You put the same thing in Tokyu Store and the same in depaato, make sure to overprice it. People will buy from depaato. Probably for a gift. It just works like that in Japan.

Plenty of KitKats is in my local Tokyu Store - no one is buying them. I never saw anyone in my office eating KitKat even once. They eat plenty of other sweets, often local. Also no one ever brought it as a travel gift (omiyage.)

This is what I saw too.

I bought a Kit Kat Chocolatory gift box large for 45 USD as a gift for our anniversary (my partner & me). The S&H was 25 USD.

It was OK, an interesting experience. Just not worth that amount of money (YMMV and the surprise effect was worth it). It contained about 5 different types of Kit Kat (maple & strawberry, green tea, butter, ..pistachio?) including 4 Sublime Bitter. The latter were, IMO, ace but I already regularly eat pure sprinkles and pure chocolate spread and I am already used to Belgian bonbons and German/Swiss chocolate. I bought it for the Japanese twist...

Strangely, a month or 2 after I received it (it was stored as a present, meanwhile) PayPal send me an e-mail that the payment wasn't claimed and I got my money back from PayPal (???). Peculiar experience.

Tourists, yes, but to a large extent internal tourism due to the tradition of bringing back regional snacks for friends, family and coworkers. If you visit the gift shops along the highways in Japan they are stacked high with kitkat boxes of the local specialty flavours.

I was basically going to write the same but to avoid being a me too comment, here's the catalog to show you the diversity:

https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/gotouchi/

It's a not so uncommon omiyage to buy. Each region has their own flavors, so you are more likely to get them from co-workers than friends.

There was also the marketing ploy around 15? years ago that they did a play on Kit Kat to be きっとかつ/きっと勝つ/kitto katsu for students that wanted to feel like they would surely win a game or pass a test.

Same. Lived in Japan, rarely saw anyone outside of tourists buying them. Combinis and grocery stores hardly ever feature them (unless those stores get tourist traffic).

Can second this. I travel to Tokyo often and have purchased Kit Kat to bring back home. Mostly tourists buy these, none of my local japanese friends do

Speaking of tourist candy, what's with M&M stores being at all the off-broadway/times square ripoffs in every major city?

Spending 50% of my time in an investment office in Japan - at least one secretary I know loves Kit Kat and Reese’s

Same observation here, before my first trip I expected Kit Kat to be huge there

When I was in Japan I think I came back with 7 different flavours of KitKat. And they all (but one or so) tasted really good. It's too bad they aren't available elsewhere. Another type of Candy where the Japanese get creative with flavours are Pocky sticks. There's always a flavour you didn't try yet.

I have been pleasantly surprised with Japanese takes on American desserts and pastries. They tone down the sugar and elevate the texture and flavor imho.

I was most amused to find a "Men's" Pocky in Japan. I couldn't believe I'd been eating gender-neutral Pocky the entire time before.

FWIW Pocky are called Mikado in the UK (made under license from Glico by Kraft AFAICT, [0]). They're marketed as quirky [and] Japanese, rather like [1]. But, I think they only do one flavour.

Are the flavoured ones the same thin breadstick with different flavoured coatings? Are they all chocolate based?

To me they're vaguely reminiscent of Corinthians[2], which are rather like the inner part of a kit-kat too. Corinthians used to be served in ice-cream in UK restaurants.

[0] https://www.otakunews.com/Article/1451/is-mikado-pocky-a-tas...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mikado

[2] https://shop.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=5...

I can get matcha flavored KitKats at a local store here in the US.

That has not been good for my waistline.

Tomato flavored pocky is so good

If you enjoy reading about this kind of phenomenon, TV Tropes has a whole article on things that have developed huge cult followings in export markets but are considered rather pedestrian in the home market. It's titled "Germans Love David Hasselhoff".

https://tvtropes.org/Main/GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff

I always wondered what the back story is on that show about Kit Kats in Japan that is on Amazon Prime and now I know.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0779HX39G

It was a pretty good show, I liked it a lot. Seeing how they grow Wasabi, make 7-spice, etc. was really fascinating.

For example, Kit Kat Japan won a Cannes Media Grand Prix award in 2009 for creating a candy-box-post-card sold in Japanese post-offices. I believe the idea was to enable a convenient way to send a gift during Japan's gift-giving seasons.

I wonder how Kit Kat is made in Germany. To me they taste better than the Japanese (plain) Kit Kat. Different chocolate? Sweeter? Not sure.

It is just chocolate. Personally, Strawberry Pocky > KitKat.

Matcha Tea Pocky >> Whatever.

Topics here don't have to be technical in nature. From the guidelines [0]:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. [...] anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I believe that HN readers also have a special place in their heart for Japanese snacks after those articles got trending:

https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fit...

https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/how-many-lines-...

You don't eat Kit Kats while hacking?

Time for a survey: what is your go-to hacking snack or drink?

Hacking for fun is one of those activities that engulf me and make me forget to eat for many hours.

Used to be fun-sized Kit Kats. Now it's 3 Musketeers minis.

I'm pretty sure by washing them down with diet Mt. Dew they have negative calories.

The roast beef classic [1]: salt & vinegar potato chips, coca cola

[1]: http://rbeef.blogspot.com/2005/12/i-could-not-eat-chips-i-wa...

Black coffee with a touch of honey.

Raisins.

Bland but doesn't upset my stomach.

Coffee, black.

Or if it's after 5 PM or so, beer. But my code quality drops dramatically after a couple of those...

Club Mate and Cheez Crunchers

Lots of green tea, 1,5 - 2 litres per day. Not sure if thats healthy or not.

Same here, often jasmin blended with some Lapsang Souchong ("smoked tea") to give it a bit more punch. I've been doing this for decades and haven't noticed anything other than that it makes you pee quite a lot - a good thing as it serves as a natural screen/keyboard break.

As someone who also drinks litres of tea every day while at work, I have never tried blending two different types of tea.

Do you blend them 50/50 or have you found a better ratio? (I'd assume you don't need much lapsang)

A pinch of Lapsang is enough, I never actually measured the ratio. I do blend tea all the time, sometimes with Rooibos, sometimes with spices ('Yogi tea', cinnamon, cloves etc).

Java Monster Mean Bean and Ms. Vickies' Salt and Vinegar crisps.

Work hacking: Coffee before lunch, roibos tea after lunch.

Fun hacking: red wine.

Diet Dr Pepper or Iced Green tea

Licorice and coke.

Dried fruit

Moroccan mint tea

Sometimes a boring but previously popular product finds a new niche in a different country/culture and booms. That boom could reach all the way back to the home country, because they innovated elsewhere (while protecting their base cash flow).

Is it less boring because they added few flavors? Not to mention that Kit Kat in Japan is really just another kind of cheap sweets among hundreds of others. Is there anything to learn here? Is the article thoughts provoking? I thought those are key points not to get flagged in the first place.

They are doing something new and it is spreading across cultures... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/10/cryogenic-candy-in-ja...

People voted it up, therefore it belongs here.

It's the modern version of orientalism. Somehow you can make anything sound intriguing if you add "... in Japan" at the end.

These types of “why is this article on HN” posts need to be made a bannable offense.

Sorry but you aren’t entitled to seeing only the submissions you want to read.

Agree, semi-clickbait articles from mainstream sources like theverge, theguardian , nytimes (this one especially) seem to be thriving recently(?). I suppose that HN got widely recognized as source of high quality traffic and content is artificially pushed to fp now.

No, the situation has been the same for many years, as you can easily tell from looking at old submission histories.