Whenever I take the JR train to Kyoto I look out the window and see the world’s most giant chocolate bar. No, it’s not made of real chocolate, but it earned an official Guinness Book of World Record and it always makes me want to go out and buy one ASAP (the smaller size.)
It’s a Meiji Chocolate bar, to be specific, the first one created almost 100 years ago back when chocolate wasn’t so common here. As you can imagine, I’ve always been intrigued as I pass by wondering why it’s there. Even with the train going full speed the chocolate extends for a few seconds as I’m passing because it’s so long! What a playful sign!
That day I went home to Google it to see if I could unravel the mystery. To start with the facts, it’s 165.95 meters long and 27.59 meters tall and was created in 2011. To give you a sense of perspective that’s about half of the Eiffel Tower which is 300 meters tall! The giant dessert is next to the Meiji factory in Takatsuki, Osaka where they make such bars, and they offer free tours of the factory. I was totally intrigued! But It was really difficult to make a reservation, especially during the summer break and for individual tour-goers (they give precedence to group tours.) To make my reservation (or for two as I did) it took a little finesse. I made a direct call to the office number and a nice woman informed me what days and time were open. Later online I saved the date for the time she told me and got my spot!
That afternoon, Osaka.com writer Sam and I arrived at Hankyu Tomita station but it was not close to the destination. It was a very hot June day and we walked next to a long highway only to discover later that there was a nice stroll along a river that we could have taken. With that in mind, make sure your phone is charged so you can use Google Maps to find the best route. In this case we’ll include our river route so you can avoid the noxious gases of the passing trucks. Here’s a map:
Once we saw the giant Meiji sign we knew we’d found the factory. But where was the giant chocolate bar?? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see it up close? We put that out of mind as the friendly staff waiting up front guided us inside and showed us where to go. We noticed that most people came by car -it’s not easy to get to Takatsuki’s industrial district by foot!
They checked our names from the reservation and gave us free Meiji chocolates and gummies as a thank you for visiting! What a pleasant surprise! This was the amazing Japanese service that I love. 100% Grape juice gummy and Marble chocolate , a totally nostalgic treat that I used to eat on school field trips! I had forgotten how much I loved the taste -it was so delicious to eat it again (we were only allowed to once the tour was over.)
In the waiting room there was an exhibit of the history of Meiji chocolate we could check out while waiting for the tour to start. We were allowed to take pictures here but not inside the factory so they encouraged us to wander around while we were waiting and explore the history of the products throughout the years, go to the bathroom, etc.
One of the displays were real cacao nuts to show where chocolate comes from (and smell it too) as well as and old designs for chocolate wrappers, gummys, hard candy, etc. It was nostalgic to see some of the candies I used to eat as a child and the decorations in the room were hand made and creative!
The blinds made of chocolate wrappers were so cute! There were home made figures, clay sculptures, and the like. Some interesting rare or discontinued packages were also part of the exhibit which included Mogi Mogi Fruits, Puchi gum, and Hi-chews. I love the retro wrappings including the package for Kinoko No Yama which remains mostly unchanged to this day! It was enough to make me a lifelong fan of Meiji and once I got a chance to tour the factory -even more so!
Meiji recently stopped making Chelsea, which is a hard candy. It’s being sold on Mercari (Japanese E-bay) now for high prices and by the boxful! I used to love the yogurt flavor when I was younger. When I went to the market I couldn’t find any in the last few months it was available.
I found a cute raccoon in the corner of the package from when I was a kid, but this character has been discontinued. I thought about how the Meiji chocolate bar was born a few years before my 95 year old grandma. She told me about the American soldiers giving out chocolates when they arrived after the war but I was intrigued to see they were making Meiji BEFORE WWII. The chocolate bar board with the Meiji chocolate packages shown throughout the years and the Kinoko No Yama were my favorite part of the exhibit.
In addition to the packages were some large scale recreations in the form of a giant Marble Chocolate sculpture and Carl, a mascot who you could take a picture with as well thanks to the kind guides.
Here were the cacao beans you could smell. There were raw and roasted beans to see the difference between the two scents!
I love these cute handmade art pieces, I was really curious who made them! There were even some recycled items too made from discarded wrappings. Meiji is environmentally minded. The factory has large solar panels on the roof and they’ve engaged in reforestation in the area around the building.
I was surprised how many people showed up as well that day. I didn’t think there would be many but there were at least 10 family groups with small kids, a group of women friends, and us -they even split us up into 2 tour groups because it was a full house!
Upon reflection, the tour was so informative I think it would be a good homework assignment for a children’s show and it’s entertaining for adults too!
But while waiting for it to start we saw how chocolate was made with a presentation on the monitor. I never thought about how the bean is grown in South America and how it finds its way to Japan. It was fascinating how much work goes into it and gave me more respect for my sweets which I’ve always taken for granted. The presentation was given on a podium made of chocolate. While the former is made at the factory here in Osaka, yogurt and camembert cheese are made in 6 other factories that handle additional products. Only 3 of them in Japan offer tours and we were lucky that Osaka’s was one of them!
We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the factory (because of trade secrets?) But the scale of it was almost as big as that giant chocolate bar. There were at least 3 floors which each handled a separate product line! That included making the candy, in some cases cooling it, then inspecting and packaging. Sliding along long rail lines that whizzed and whirred up and down and all around the walls and tall ceilings. Haz-mat suited alien looking humans would follow the pieces around and check, fix, and guide the mass-produced sweets.
Unfortunately during the timing of our visit the machines for the chocolate-making were stopped for their regularly scheduled cleaning (sad emoji.) Through the glass we could see a maintenance worker swabbing the pieces that made the mushroom chocolate. Luckily our tour guide pulled up a video to show us the involved process of how it’s made. This includes using two different types of dark chocolate that are fused to a cracker and -I wont bore you with the long description but suffice it to say it’s incredibly complex and amazing to watch!
Another awe-inspiring scene was how many humans it took to test and make sure every cookie is made correctly. We imagine that AI and automation can make everything but I wasn’t aware how much humans are still needed for stuff like safety checks. They would scan each package using x-rays and test for any unwanted items that got inside the bag like a piece of metal or plastic. These are the kind of repetitive tasks that would make you go crazy, it made me appreciate how much work gets put into just a regular bag of candy. Besides the human beings that helped the process along there were, of course, some wild robots that bagged up the chocolates. It was fun to watch it sense each box to sort it along the way.
The two big products made here are Kinoko No Yama and Takenoko No Sato and the process to make them both is slightly different. One of them is a cookie covered in chocolate while the other is a cracker attached to a chocolate piece that looks like a mushroom. The best selling product is the Meiji 72% cacao chocolate which is a sign of the times: people want a healthy dessert (with lots of polyphenols!)
On that note, another cool factoid from the day: the Marble chocolate (which looks like an M &M) uses natural food dye for the candy which comes from things like squid ink (used for black.) They want it to be safe for children to eat so they don’t use anything unnatural. I don’t think you could say as much for the American candies with the neon colors (try finding the color “hot pink” in nature.) Marble is more matte and pastel dyed.
When the tour is over you can vote for your favorite Kinoko or Takenoko chocolate by hitting the button. Most people like Sato but we loved Kinoko the best, specifically because it has two delicious kinds of dark chocolate in it (which we didn’t know until we took this tour.)
The guides were kind enough to take pictures of us outside with Karl Ojisan and with an ancient steam train used long ago for Meiji factory business.
For our return trip we took a different road along the river at which point we could FINALLY eat our Marble chocolates and gummy snacks. These sweets may not get as much attention as some of the more trendy types but sometimes “old classic” is still great! On that hot summers day those delicious natural chocolate ”M &M” style choco and sweet 100% juice gummies were just the thing we needed to replenish! Simple and delicious.
It was during this stroll that a miracle happened. We had been told at the factory that the tour didn’t include a view of the giant chocolate so we were a little depressed. However as we walked along suddenly before our eyes a gargantuan brown beast towered up, an otherworldly presence, a massive chocolate bigger than any we’d ever seen in our lives…
But it was blocked by some trees and we needed to get a great shot for Osaka Dot Com. We had to get closer. We came to a very old tunnel that went under the JR train and the next thing we knew we were in a residential neighborhood. Yet somehow amongst the houses there were rice paddies with big stretches of land submerged in water and other spots with farmed vegetables -and then right before us the giant chocolate towered overhead. It was quite the surreal scene!
And to add to that: the whole neighborhood was filled with the smell of chocolate! We were jealous of the people living here. Since Japanese dry their clothes outside on clothes pins we wondered if maybe their laundry smelled like chocolate. Do they wake up and smell chocolate everyday when coming outside or opening the window? Does it make them want to eat chocolate everyday or have they grown to hate it?
The view over here was EVEN better than the view from the train! 100 times better!
But since the tour coincided with the lunch hour we had never gotten a chance to eat anything besides the sweets. For our return trip we happened upon a small-town bakery and wandered in. They had delicious cream pan and kare-pan. It’s called Mesaverte. Definitely check it out if you come for the tour.
After that we went to the market to buy every chocolate we could find that was made at the factory here in Osaka. That includes:Galbo, Choco Baby, Yan Yan, and Macadamia Chocolate. We tried and taste tested all of them. Meiji has made us fans for life! (Technicality: Yan Yan is actually made overseas but we wanted to try that one too.)
This fun and free tour is great for families and singles alike, check it out if you’re looking for something fun to do in Osaka that’s off the beaten track! Until next time!
