A visit to the Meiji Chocolate Factory

A couple of months ago, my supervisor Dave came to visit me at Tsunoe. While eating lunch, we were chatting with some of the other teachers, and Dave brought up the fact that he had tried to organise a trip to the Meiji Chocolate Factory, but hadn't been able to make a booking. Note that this school is close enough to the Meiji Chocolate Factory that on most days there, I can smell the chocolate. After this, Dave casually asked when the next school trip to the Meiji Chocolate Factory would be. The teachers weren't sure, but quickly found out. "Lucy, are you working here that day?" No I wasn't, however, when this sad fact was mentioned to my Vice Principal, he quickly got on the phone to the school I was rostered on to for the excursion day, and pretty soon had arranged for a swap of days. Both Dave and my Vice Principal at Tsunoe are incredibly awesome!

Fast-forward to yesterday - Meiji School Trip day with Yr. 3. A bit of work needed to be done to re-adjust my schedule for the day so that my teaching worked around the trip times, but this was all cheerfully achieved, and with that, a very excited Lucy joined 80-odd very excited eight-year olds for a trip to the chocolate factory. As I said before, the factory is close to the school. No bus required, we got into lines and walked.

When we got there, we were ushered into a media room and shown a video about the chocolate factory, starring a confectionery crazy brother and sister who went to sleep and woke up at the factory. Cheesy, yes, but to my pleasant surprise I was able to understand the gist of pretty much all of it. We also all got a bag of goodies to take home, including a bag or Kaaru (curls), which I had never eaten before, but are of the Twistie/Cheezle variety, but with a milder flavour, a packet of Marbles (Smarties), some information booklets and a couple of other bits and pieces. I shared to Kaaru with the teachers back in the staffroom, but the marbles I kept for myself.

After the video, we had a toilet break, during which I ran around taking photos of stuff. I also learnt that this is one of only three major Meiji factories in Japan. This just reinforces my belief that Takatsuki is an incredible place to live. Not only is it ideally situated halfway between Kyoto and Osaka, two of the top three cities in Japan, it also has a chocolate factory. What more could I ask for?

Some of the Meiji products

Me with the Meiji mascots. If you aren't familiar with it, the picture on my t-shirt is actually the chemical structure for Theobromine, the key chemical in chocolate

  
After this, it was time for the tour itself. This aspect had two major disappointments. Firstly, I wasn't allowed to take any photos. I guess this is reasonable for the factory windows itself, but I would have loved to take photos of the human sized confectionery in the hallway. The other disappointment was perhaps more unreasonable. Somehow, my inner child was hoping for a Willy Wonka experience, even though I knew there was no way it was going to happen. Oh well.

Inside, we got to handle and smell cocoa beans, which I could only just smell through my blocked nose, and also broken up cocoa beans, which smelt absolutely divine even through my blocked nose.

Then we walked along a windowed corridor and saw the Kaaru being made, flavoured, packaged and boxed. It was interesting to follow all the mechanics of production and to work out what was happening at each step. However, a key factor was missing. Kaaru do not contain any chocolate. The next floor was more of a success. There we were able to see the production (in reverse, starting with the packaging) of chocolate-topped mushrooms, or Kinoko no Yama. These are absolutely delicious, and had the required chocolate component, and thus this section was much more entertaining, at least for me. So much chocolate!

And there ended the Meiji excursion. The kids had another toilet stop, and I left early with another of the teachers so that we could get ready for our 4th period lessons, with a few stops for photos along the way.

This is nearly as tall as me. I wanted to kiss it and hug it and otherwise act inappropriately, but I had to pretend to be a responsible adult.

Chocolate in its natural habitat