Photo tour: The amazing artistry of Japan's candy shops

TOKYO — When you enter a store devoted to the good ol' KitKat chocolate bar, and suddenly find flavors available in green tea, raspberry, pistachio, maple, strawberry and even a bar that's fruit-filled, well, you know you're not in the USA anymore.

The KitKat Chocolatory is just one of many high-end dessert shops here, where individual candies are often available in more flavors than you've ever imagined, often character-based and always presented as individual works of art.

And unlike the United States, it's rare to walk down a street and not find at least one chocolate shop on every block. Many are local, like Goncharoff and Morozoff, or immigrants from France and Italy, like the Mon Loire Chocolate House, whose store resembles a forest, completes with trees and branches.

And beyond the individual candies, most of the shops also sell ice cream, usually in the form of unique parfaits like the mixture of vanilla, hot fudge and Frosted Flakes cereal at the St. Marc Cafe Chococo. Less adventurous types can try the homemade potato chips at the Calbee Plus shop in Kobe's Umie shopping center, covered in chocolate and soft serve vanilla ice cream. 

If you visit in October, you'll see lots of pumpkins, witches and goblins. That most American of customs, Halloween, is also celebrated in Japan. 

Click through the gallery above to see our photo tour of Japanese candy shops.