10 Best Food Souvenirs From Japan: What to Bring Back Home

While we live in the digital age and family and friends back home can easily enjoy pictures and posts from our travels in real-time, there is still something to be said of the joy that souvenirs can bring. 

Watching a loved one’s face break into a big smile as they open your carefully thought-out gift and explaining the story behind it can’t be replaced by a social media story!

But what to get them? Japan, with its claim to fame in the field of food, pop culture, and tradition, can make this quite the quandary! 

Additionally, if you’re taking your treasures home on an international flight, there will, of course, be weight limitations imposed on you by your airline, not to mention international regulations on the goods you can and cannot bring into or out of the country.

But fear not – here is a handy list of ten suitcase-friendly souvenirs to bring a little slice of Japan home with you!

Want a taste of Japan before your trip? Check out our Gourmet Market, where you can purchase delicious Japanese snacks, tea, or a curated box of Japanese pantry staples! Everything delivered straight to your door.

As you may already know, matcha is a common flavor in Japan. Anything sweet and green tea-flavored will surely be a hit with relatives! 

There’s no shortage of green tea goodies, either, and the best part is that you can find the vast majority of them for affordable prices at local supermarkets and convenience stores, making them a convenient gift to bring back from Japan. 

So keep your eyes peeled on your travels for matcha chocolate, matcha cookies, matcha daifuku, and the ever-popular matcha Kit Kats.

Have you ever tried strawberry cheesecake Kit Kats? How about melon? Are you adventurous enough to try wasabi flavor? Every region in Japan has its own unusual Kit Kat flavor, and there are often limited edition flavors sold throughout Japan’s vibrant seasons. 

Sakura-flavored Kit Kats make an appearance in spring, while sweet potato and pumpkin Kit Kats line the shelves in fall. They always make a nice, fun present for people back home and they carry a personal link to your travels around Japan, too!

What many visitors to Japan notice when exploring its eateries is the number of fake food samples displayed in shop windows to entice passersby. You might be delighted to know that you can bring a little piece of this tradition home with you! 

Souvenir stands across the country sell magnets or keychains fashioned in the image of Japan’s famous fake food samples. From succulent sushi to deceptively real daifuku, these make delightfully quirky and unmistakable Japanese gifts for your foodie friends back home.

Instead of buying a fake food keychain or magnet from a souvenir shop to bring home, how about making your own handmade gift? In this Tokyo fake food sample workshop, you’ll choose from a selection of Japanese favorites to turn into surprisingly detailed fake food. 

From ramen to tarts, cupcakes or parfaits, you can choose the perfect food to give to your loved ones. You’ll learn from a professional from Yamato Sample Factory, a food sample-making company with over 70 years of history. 

Yatsuhashi are a great snack to bring back from Japan. These triangular-shaped treats are a Kyoto specialty with their sweet, mochi-like exterior hiding a soft filling from sweet bean paste. They are incredibly addictive and it’s hard to resist buying some during a visit to Kyoto. 

Yatsuhashi are available in a variety of delicious flavors. The classics are green tea or plain flavor (both with a red bean paste filling), but more modern flavors like chocolate or custard have become quite common.

This is the definitive Tokyo souvenir, beloved by residents and visitors alike. Creamy banana custard is enveloped in a soft, squishy sponge cake. 

This is quite commonly gifted among families and colleagues whenever someone visits the capital and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t partake in this tradition too! 

Besides the standard variety, honey, coffee and even sakura Tokyo Banana can be found throughout shops in Tokyo. 

There are even special edition varieties that bear the likeness of popular cartoon characters, a great treat to bring home from Japan for kids and the kids at heart!

Otsumami is a Japanese word that refers explicitly to snacks one enjoys when drinking alcohol. The closest English equivalent is probably “bar snacks,” but otsumami is a genre of Japanese food in and of itself.

Otsumami make for more unusual gifts to bring back from Japan to challenge the folks at home with. You won’t find cheesy biscuits or tins of peanuts in Japan. Think more along the lines of various dried seafood, crunchy sour plums, and a lot of squid. 

Of course, if your friends and family are not that brave, rice crackers are a good bet, as are kaki no tane, peanuts mixed in with slender, slightly spicy rice crackers.

These maple leaf-shaped cakes are one of Hiroshima's signature foods. The sweet cake is filled with a satisfyingly thick filling, usually red bean paste, green tea paste, or custard (though this is just the core selection of the available flavors). 

If you can’t make it out to Hiroshima, you can find bags of store brand momiji manju at many of Japan’s neighborhood supermarket chains. While they may not be the real deal as sold in Hiroshima, they are still delicious and also a little cheaper!

Chocolate might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Japan, but it’s a popular gift to bring back from Hokkaido. 

Japan’s northernmost island, with its fertile and open plains, is home to a huge number of dairy farms. All that milk, of course, means that chocolate has become an unlikely regional specialty. 

So, if you’re visiting Hokkaido and you know a chocoholic, be sure to pick up something for them while you’re there. 

Royce is one of the many confectioners in the region and is arguably the most popular. Their best seller is their “Nama-Choco,” a sheet of creamy chocolate truffles. They require refrigeration, so if you’re worried about them surviving the long journey home, they also sell chunky bars of regular chocolate that will do just fine in your suitcase.

As you may have noticed, sake can be hard to come by outside Japan. The little that does tend to be sold overseas is often expensive and not to everyone’s taste. However, during your travels, you’ll find that the sake variety in Japan is vast and untouchable in taste. 

This makes it a wonderful gift to bring home from Japan for the sommeliers in your life or anyone who likes a nice, relaxing drink in the evening or on their days off. 

Should you plan to stop by any sake breweries on your travels, definitely pick up a brewery-exclusive bottle while you’re there. These small-batch bottles are often the best of the bunch, affordable, and unlikely to be found on supermarket shelves overseas!

With the world of sake in Japan being so vast, choosing the right bottle for gifts can be intimidating. If you are unsure what sake to buy for your loved ones, join this educational sake tasting in Tokyo’s Shinbashi area. 

Learn from an expert as you explore the history, culture and brewing process of sake while sampling six varieties. At the end of the tasting, you can use your newfound knowledge to purchase a wonderful bottle of sake for friends or family back home. 

This seems like an incredibly cheap present on the surface, and you might be concerned that relatives will judge you forever for what sounds like a very basic gift. But in reality, Japan has a lot of unusual instant ramen flavors that you won’t find at home. 

Many report that the taste of Japanese cup ramen is far superior to that of those sold overseas. Cheese curry, super spicy mapo tofu, and even cilantro are all flavors that can be grabbed off shelves at the convenience store! 

Even if you don’t want to go for a wacky variety, regular flavors of instant ramen in Japan are all quite delicious. This is an enjoyable and creative present for the noodle lover in your life that won’t break the bank.

Tip: If you want to give someone a truly unique cup noodle gift, try making your own at the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama or Osaka. You can choose from a variety of toppings and even design the cup, making it a great personalized gift for friends and family. 

After reading this list, the most pressing question on your mind right now might be what gift is best for who. And more importantly, which of these should you squirrel away in a hidden corner of your luggage to enjoy yourself? 

It’s, of course, not possible to fit all of these wonderful gifts into one suitcase, so there is only one solution: you’ll just have to come back to Japan again to stock up on more souvenirs!

If you are looking to infuse the locations you visited into your gifts, check out our list of 47 souvenirs for Japan's 47 prefectures! Perfect for those who enjoy collecting regional goodies.