9 Japanese Candies You Should Try At Least Once

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Japan has a legendary food scene built over thousands of years of history, great ingredients, and dedication to craftsmanship. This pursuit of perfection has made the Land of the Rising Sun a coveted travel destination, its food scene appealing to even the unenthusiastic eater who still knows how good a properly prepared bowl of ramen can be. From incredibly fresh seafood to carefully rolled sushi, delicate sandwiches, steaming broth in bowls full of noodles, and traditional desserts, there's something for everyone.

In recent years, the beauty of Japanese convenience stores has not gone unnoticed by social media, with countless Reels and TikToks displaying smoothie and cappuccino machines, endless flavors of delicious and affordable packaged sandwiches, chips, treats, hot cases, and everything in between. The fact that you can find these convenience stores, including 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and offshoot brands, on just about every block in Tokyo makes them even more appealing to the hungry traveler or busy local.

Of all the things to purchase when you're looking for an afternoon or late-night sweet treat, the candy selections leave nothing out. I consumed perhaps concerning levels of sugary treats on my visit to Tokyo and am here to recommend the nine best Japanese candies you should try at least once.

The texture of these gummy candies sets the bar high in terms of Japanese treats. Designed to mimic real fruit, the candy has a skin-like exterior and a juicy inside that bursts in your mouth. The multi-textured experience makes buying a pack of these an addictive and unmatchable indulgence — something that, when you think of it, won't be replaced by just any gummy.

The fruit flavors like melon, kiwi, white peach, mango, and cherry are great, but I don't think anything really tops grape, probably because the size and shape of the candy are so similar to the fruit. Having a candified version that mimics biting through the skin of a grape into the juicy inside is quite fun.

Beyond the fruit flavors, they also have a line of soda-flavored Cororo gummies like cola, Ramune (a Japanese soda), and even energy drink versions. They all come in a small bag that is conveniently resealable to keep the gummies as fresh as possible. Plus, these candies are pretty easy to find online, like on Amazon, if you're itching to try all the flavors.

Who doesn't love a creamy chocolate truffle? Biting through the encapsulating shell into a silky, smooth ganache that melts in your mouth is an experience that you might typically expect when visiting a refined chocolatier, not a convenience store, but leave it to Tokyo to have delicious snacks on every block.

The Hi-Chocolat truffles are perfectly creamy with a biteable exterior that's dusted in various flavors. There's a cocoa powder-dusted one if you're craving super-rich chocolate, a matcha version if you love a classic, a white milk-powder-dusted truffle for a creamier effect, and my personal favorite: the Earl Grey tea. This one is a lot harder to come by, but if you do find it, you're in for a treat. I love the earthiness of matcha, especially paired with something sweet, but the floral essence of Earl Grey tea combined with the smooth texture of chocolate is to die for. It cuts back on the richness and makes each bite feel a little lighter. Not being a flavor you find often, especially in convenience store candies, it makes this truffle unique and annoyingly craveable (annoying because I haven't been able to find them since visiting Tokyo).

The other flavors of Hi-Chocolat, though, are still delicious and much easier to come by. You can purchase the chocolate, white chocolate, and matcha flavors at various sites online.

The frozen treat section at a local 7-Eleven is oftentimes the first section I head to when I'm out for a snack. Despite the fact that I visited Tokyo in the wintertime, the Glico Ice Balls were a frequent purchase, as they were a treat so juicy and flavorful it was worth freezing my fingertips to consume.

The only two flavors I found were grape and apple. The grape flavor is a small package with about 10 nickel-sized sorbet balls in both green and red grape flavors. When I was young, I used to love Welch's grape juice and felt that the white grape was severely underrepresented at convenience stores, so getting this package that has equal amounts of both grape flavors is simply awesome. The grape flavor they use in Welch's is reminiscent but lighter and more complex.

My absolute favorite kind of Glico Ice Balls was apple. It's a pure, sweet, floral apple flavor, like fresh-pressed juice, and it was complemented by tiny pieces of real apple on the inside. This flavor seems a bit rarer — less common on the internet and at convenience stores in Tokyo. In addition to apple and grape, Glico also makes mango, chocolate, vanilla, blood orange, and strawberry flavors. Ordering these can be a bit trickier, given that they would melt in the mail. You could get lucky at your local Japanese grocery's frozen section, but if not, booking a flight to Anthony Bourdain's favorite food city may have to go on your bucket list.

A good candy bar will have the right balance of sweet and salty, but a great candy bar has multiple textures that make biting into it a sensory experience on more than one level. Black Thunder makes a nice crunch when you break it in half or bite into it, and the biscuit pieces interlaced with chocolate bring all the crispness and texture you desire with a rich cocoa flavor.

Beyond the unbeatable texture, there's a variety of flavors to choose from. You can't go wrong with the classic chocolate bar, but if you come across a hojicha latte, matcha, banana, or strawberry bar, it's definitely worth trying them out. As with most of the candies on this list, there are always a lot of different flavors to choose from. You can find most of them online or enjoy the treasure hunt of perusing different specialty grocery store shelves to find every one.

Every adult seems to have a favorite candy bar, one they have nostalgic memories of purchasing in their neighborhood grocery store when they were a child. Unless Kit Kat is your favorite, that one brand you keep coming back to for nostalgia's sake, it's probably moved to the back of your mind as something associated with the occasional Halloween treat or office candy-bowl grab.

But for the Japanese, the Kit Kat is one of the most popular candies, to the point where Nestlé created massive amounts of new flavors catering to East Asian tastes — although it wasn't the crispy wafer filling and cheap milk chocolate coating that made the bars so famous. In Japanese, there's a good-luck phrase, "kitto katsu," that translates to "you will surely win." The Japanese pronunciation for Kit Kat, "kitto katto," is so similar that the symbolism of Kit Kats quickly grew to represent a good luck charm, something you could give to a friend or loved one when you wanted to wish them the best.

It's safe to say that something great came out of Nestlé's clever advertising – great candy bar flavors. Milk chocolate can get old, but the original green tea flavor is super craveable (if you like green tea). They also make strawberry, chocolate orange, hojicha (a roasted matcha flavor), and milk tea, just to name a few. They're constantly putting out new flavors to see what sticks. You just might have to look online or at a Japanese grocery store to find the good ones.

HI-CHEWS became a staple in the U.S. when I was growing up. The colorful packs containing brightly wrapped candies were a favorite for sharing amongst friends and picking out of trick-or-treat bowls. The history behind them and their unique texture is an interesting one that may come as a surprise to the average American. It starts with a Japanese cultural understanding that taking gum from one's mouth is somewhat rude, similar to the understanding that walking while eating is messy and uncouth, which is a rather foreign concept to Americans. 

The creator of HI-CHEW had a mission in mind: a candy that mimics gum for how long you can chew it but that will eventually dissolve and be swallowable. Thus, the HI-CHEW was born in a variety of juicy, mouth-watering flavors and made without colors from synthetic sources.

If you're a fanatic about snacks and like to frequent niche grocery stores to see what you'll find, then finding unique HI-CHEWS is like a treasure hunt. There are sour mix pouches, dessert flavors like key lime pie and candy apple, superfruits, soda pop, and more. Of the snacks made in Japan and exported out, this is easily one of the most popular and well-known. But finding those lesser-known flavors is a great way to wow any HI-CHEW fan.

There's no shortage of gummy candies available in U.S. stores, like the chef-favorite pink Starbursts or German-based Haribo gummy bears. But there's just something about Japanese flavors and textures that are extra, extra good. Kusagai gummies are gumdrop-shaped, chewy but not tough, and come in a lot of fantastic fruity flavors (if you're lucky, you'll find the mixed fruit or assorted bag and be able to try several).

My personal favorite is lychee, a flavor that we really don't see enough of in gummy candies in the States. It's subtly sweet, a little floral, and addictively good. The peach flavor is a close second and quite common to find, but all of the other flavors – watermelon, kiwi, yuzu citrus, muscat grape, strawberry, and mango — are deliciously flavored with a pillowy chew. 

Being gummies, it's pretty easy to find Kasugai candies that can ship to you, especially if you want to try some of the more niche varieties. But you're very likely to spot them in Asian grocery stores like H-Mart and M2M, too.

Pocky has become more and more commonplace in recent years, its practical and arresting packaging easily recognizable on many U.S.-based stores' shelves. The flavors are largely consistent; that crispy stick-biscuit coated in dark chocolate is classic and delicious. The strawberry cream edition is sweet, fruity, and appealing to many, and the cookies-and-cream-flavored coating on a chocolate biscuit is a great option when you're in the mood for something sweeter.

But outside of these classic flavors made available in the U.S., as always, Japan likes to have options on options. I was taken aback when, in a massive two-story Daiso (the Japanese version of a dollar store), I came across melon-flavored Pocky sticks in a massively sized box. Matcha and sweet potato flavors were also available in the same oversized serving, presumably a fantastic party favor to share with a group. The brand is known to run specials, like salted vanilla or coconut-flaked chocolate, and even makes "Giant Pocky," where the biscuit stick itself is baked on a larger scale. The fun of making candy flavors seasonal and limited edition is really the hunt to find them.

The most important part of a good gummy candy is the texture. Even if the flavor is good, if it's overly stale or hard to chew, the flavor won't matter as you strain your jaw working on it. Poifull jelly beans look like the Jelly Bellies we know and love, but the texture is a bit different. At the center of the Poifull, there's a bit of gummy candy that's ever so slightly firmer than the rest of it, so instead of the candy interior melting away rapidly, you're left with a bit of chew that makes each bean last longer in a texturally intriguing way.

These candies come in a variety of diverse flavors, as is half the fun with candy, but the most common to find are fruit mixes with pineapple, muscat grape, apple, raspberry, or lemon. They're just as sweet and juicy as you'd hope, and finding the more niche flavors (like soda) can make the excitement around it that much stronger. Poifull jelly beans are readily available on numerous internet sites that will ship right to you.