Photos: Have a break, or 300 with Japan’s mind-boggling KitKat flavours

If you're tired of the regular old KitKat flavours available on shelves around, Japan is the place for you with over 300 flavours of this popular snack available, ranging from sake, green tea and wasabi to msacarpone, melon and even cough medicine!

Updated on: Sep 07, 2017 11:36 AM IST

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Cough medicine flavoured KitKat anyone? While it may not be to everyone’s taste, this is just one of 300 weird and wonderful flavours of the four-fingered snack available in the Japanese market, and they’re flying off the shelves! (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)

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KitKats have been around in Britain since 1935 and only arrived in Japan in 1973. But the Japanese market is one with a difference-- a huge array of different flavours. The flavour mania started with a strawberry flavoured KitKat in 2000 and the range expanded quickly, rolling out flavours aimed at local taste buds such as sake, green tea and wasabi extending to more exotic combinations like melon and mascarpone. (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)

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In true Japanese style, human workers are a rare sight at one KitKat factory in Kasumigaura, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Tokyo. Instead, dozens of robots manufacture four million bars a day at breakneck speed, from mixing the chocolate paste to wrapping them ready for sale. (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)

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Withholding exact turnover figures for Japan, KitKat manufacturer Nestle says sales have grown 50 percent in the country since 2010, making it the biggest market ahead of Britain -- although second-biggest in terms of volume. (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)

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But while most of us are accustomed to a few variations of the snack, Cedric Lacroix, managing executive officer of Nestle Japan’s confectionery business, says that Japanese consumers appreciate the variety of flavours on offer. ‘Consumers want to see new things, taste new products, even if they always end up buying their favourite flavour.’ (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)

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The company also plays on the superstitious nature of the Japanese public. ’KitKat has become a sort of good-luck charm to which the Japanese have become emotionally attached,’ said Lacroix. The name reminds people of the Japanese phrase ‘kitto katsu’, meaning ‘sure to win’. It has therefore become common to hand them to friends before an exam or an important event. (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)

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Twenty or so new versions of KitKat are unleashed on the Japanese market every year, after months of refining the flavour. ‘One third of the products is renewed every year.’ KitKat also offers customers the chance to have their chocolate elaborately gift-wrapped, get special flavours made and even have messages engraved on the bars. (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)

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Beyond the local market, the snack is increasingly targeting tourists in a country that aims to have 40 million foreign visitors in 2020 when Tokyo hosts the Olympics, four times as many as in 2013. Travellers are increasingly returning home with bags filled with some of the more outlandish ‘made in Japan’ KitKat flavours. (Behrouz Mehri / AFP)