Japanese snacks and sweets subscription services for the win

Japanese sweets don’t have to rely on sugar to be delicious. Less overpoweringly sweet than their Western counterparts, Japanese confections make use of a wide range of ingredients, from year-round favorites like matcha and yuzu to seasonal tastes like cherry blossom and chestnut. They’re a treat for the eyes too, with artistic and playful packaging and morsels often individually wrapped for easy sharing or long-term savoring.

The only drawback is that Japanese snacks and sweets can be hard to find outside Japan. That’s where subscription services like these come in, bringing the world of Japanese sweets to your doorstep.

Bokksu: Classy snacks with cultural themes and tea

Every month, Bokkusu puts together a new bundle of almost two dozen different kinds of Japanese sweets built around a regional, seasonal or cultural theme, such as springtime cherry blossom parties, summertime matsuri (festivals), or Japan’s otsukimi moon viewing traditions. One of their most recent is a snack journey around the northern island of Hokkaido, with locally made milk manju sweet dumplings, yubari melon chocolate and honey rice crackers all on your taste buds’ itinerary.

New subscribers’ first box is always Bokksu’s standardized Seasons of Japan, with a balanced mix of both sweet and savory flavors, but after that you’re into the rotation for the monthly themes. Bokkusu even includes a different kind of Japanese tea each month, giving you something to sip on as you leaf through the 24-page Japanese cultural guide that comes with your first bundle.

TokyoTreat: Simple fun loved by everyone in Japan

Japanese sweets aren’t all just deep tradition and cultural significance, though, and TokyoTreat’s focus is on the modern snacks loved across Japan. Their bundles are something you’ll especially want to check out if you’ve been wanting to try Japan’s incredible range of special KitKat flavors, like chestnut, salty lemon or sweet potato. TokyoTreat includes a pack of the chocolate-covered wafers every month and special Japan-only flavors of Pringles and Fanta sometimes make appearances too.

Instead of tea, you get a monthly soft drink, and even some Japanese noodles to have as a main course before your dessert, such as instant ramen, udon or yakisoba. TokyoTreat even sometimes throws in baked goods like Japan’s amazing melon bread or limited-time anime series collaboration candies, making opening their monthly boxes feel like making a snack run to a Japanese convenience store.

Japan Candy Box: A chance at second helpings of your favorite treats

Japan Candy Box provides especially eclectic monthly sweets-and-snacks bundles. You might get a pack of Pokémon instant ramen, Okinawa pineapple gummies, sakura matcha Pocky or banana Black Thunder chocolate.

With so many flavors, the odds of finding one you’ll fall in love with are pretty high. If and when that happens, you’ll be glad to know that you can do more than just sit around keeping your fingers crossed for your new favorite snack to come again in a future box. That’s because once something shows up in one of Japan Candy Box’s monthly bundles, it also gets offered for direct purchase through their website. So while the monthly boxes are great as fun surprising samplers of what’s new, you’ve also got the option to make their contents regular members of your regular snack rotation if eating them just once isn’t enough.