Momiji manjū are maple leaf-shaped cafes with red bean jam that are the most famous specialty souvenir of Hiroshima, and especially Miyajima (home of the floating tori). We tried numerous flavours during our visit in 2015, and Nestlé paid homage to this local delight with this Nestlé KitKat Momiji Manjū that was released as the region limited KitKat for Hiroshima in October 2017.
These KitKats are made in collaboration with Takatsudo, a famous 100-year-old family-run bakery that first created the momiji manjū in 1906. The inside of the box explains this collaboration and incorporates the bakery’s distinctive deer logo and font on the boxes.
Each box contained 12 individually sealed mini bars.
The packaging of each bar is decorated with the same deer logo and font of Takatsudo as well as photo of momiji manjū.
Unlike the standard region limited mini-bars that have a distinct break along the entire length, this KitKat incorporates a maple leaf into half of the bar. The bars themselves have had red bean paste sandwiching the wafers, while the flavour of manjū dough has been incorporated into the enrobing white chocolate.
The aroma of the sweet red bean paste was evident just on opening the packaging. Upon tasting, the sweetness from the manjū flavoured white chocolate came through before biting into the crisp wafer releases a deliciously prominent nutty red bean flavour the peaked mid-bite before the manjū flavoured white chocolate returns for a sweet finish with the red bean lingering pleasantly in the aftertaste.
The red bean KitKats are some of our favourite and this one is no exception, with the restrained sweetness of the red bean paste complementing the sweeter white chocolate.
This Nestlé KitKat Momiji Manjū contained 12 mini-bars. It was produced in Japan and purchased in Tōkyō, Japan in 2018.