Kitto Katsu

My neighbor, Angie, has introduced me to countless new wonders on Okinawa, but today she introduced us to a new hobby - Kit Kat hunting.  You see, apparently the Japanese love their Kit Kats, so much so that they need to tweak them, improve on them, make them their own and they do this by adding flavors to them.  No ordinary milk chocolate Kit Kat will do when there are exotic flavors like azuki bean, green tea or sweet potato to add.  Kit Kat apparently sounds a whole lot like the Japanese phrase "kitto katsu" which means "I hope you succeed" so it's common to give these little nummies to students before they take tests or whenever someone is in need of a little well-wishing.

There is actually a website out there documenting over 100 different flavored Kit Kats in the world!  Yes, apparently Nestle (or Hersheys in the US) treats other parts of the world to this culinary delight, but unfortunately not their US customers.

So the rumor on island is the further you get away from the military bases, the better (or more unusual) the flavors you can find.  And the best chance of finding these Kit Kats is to stop at one of the MANY convenient stores on island (Lawsons, CoCos or FamilyMart).  So today that's what we did.  Call us crazy, but Angie and I loaded our 6 kids in the back of the "Blue Beater" (our van) and headed down to the bottom of the island.  Every time we saw a convenient store, we stopped, taking turns to run in and check the stock. 

Angie and London coming out with a "hit"

There were lots of stops, few scores,

(Cannon coming back to the car after scoring 3 flavors at one store!)

but by the end of the day we tallied up 19 stops with hits at five of the stops!  The resulting flavors?

Green Tea

Dark chocolate 

(Can you see the chocolate all over Emmy's face?)

Coffee? (we think) and Raspberry

Strawberry, banana and milk chocolate minis

Mixed fruit (as translated by the security guard at the front gate!)

We rated each candy bar as we ate it and the winner was...banana!!!

Half way around our tour we stopped at an amazing beach to let the kids run off some of the sugar buzz and stretch our legs.  The water around here never ceases to amaze me with its array of shades of blue.  Angie and I were trying to describe it.  Blue gatorade (as another neighbor called it)?  Blue jello?  Blue tarp blue?  I don't think there is a true descriptive word and maybe that's the beauty of the color - like no other in the world.

(Isaac, Andrew, Becca, Cannon, London & Emmy)