In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
nytimes.com
In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
1–10 of 56 posts
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#2I'm surprised to see this on the first page of HN. I'm trying really hard to see how this could belong here. Anyone care to explain?! thanks
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#3When 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.
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#4I'm surprised to see this on the first page of HN. I'm trying really hard to see how this could belong here. Anyone care to explain?! thanks
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).
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#5I'm surprised to see this on the first page of HN. I'm trying really hard to see how this could belong here. Anyone care to explain?! thanks
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.
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#6I'm surprised to see this on the first page of HN. I'm trying really hard to see how this could belong here. Anyone care to explain?! thanks
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).
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Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#7I'm surprised to see this on the first page of HN. I'm trying really hard to see how this could belong here. Anyone care to explain?! thanks
It's the modern version of orientalism. Somehow you can make
anything sound intriguing if you add "... in Japan" at the
end.
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#8I'm surprised to see this on the first page of HN. I'm trying really hard to see how this could belong here. Anyone care to explain?! thanks
You don't eat Kit Kats while hacking?
Time for a survey: what is your go-to hacking snack or drink?
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#9This 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
Re: In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate
#10I'm surprised to see this on the first page of HN. I'm trying really hard to see how this could belong here. Anyone care to explain?! thanks
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.