Here in the United States, the Kit Kat isn’t an especially notable candy bar. Sure, it snaps apart, which is handy if you want to pretend you’re not going to eat the whole thing all at once. And it has a great jingle—the beloved “Give me a break already, Kit Kat, you delicious confection!” song.
But while the American Kit Kat may not languish in relative obscurity like your Clark Bar or your Zagnut, it doesn’t have the vaunted status that Kit Kats apparently enjoy in Japan. Over there, Nestle constantly invents new flavors of the treat—Kit Kat varieties are the nation’s primary form of artistic expression—and we’ve imported many of Japan’s novel Kit Kat flavors for A.V. Club Taste Tests. Now, the Japanese people’s dedication to the candy will be enshrined in the world’s first Kit Kat store. (This news comes to us from Brian Ashcraft, Kotaku’s resident Japanologist.)
The Kit Kat “Chocolatory” will offer upscale flavors like “Special Sakura Green Tea” and “Sublime Bitter.” Nestle has even enlisted a pastry chef—you’ve probably guessed that it’s Yasumasa Takagai—to concoct new seasonal varieties year-round. The store opened today (or, as it’s known in Japan, yesterday) at the Seibu department store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district. It’s sure to become a destination for Kit Kat fanatics, most of whom are conveniently located nearby.