7-Eleven has us wanting to head north ASAP.

Japan’s convenience stores are like its mountains and forests, in that the scenery changes with the seasons. Not only will you always find something tasty in Japanese convenience stores, you’ll also always find something new, as they roll out new snacks and sweets catered to seasonal cravings and new food trends.

Over the last few years, it’s become customary for the arrival of serious summer heat to be accompanied by the appearance of mint chocolate desserts. This week, 7-Eleven Japan released its latest contribution to the genre: the mint chocolate whipped cream sandwich!

Yes, even though we’ve only barely come out of the blissful food coma we went into when we ate 7-Eleven’s regular whipped cream sandwich, it’s already evolved into a higher form of deliciousness. Officially called the Chocolate Mint Whipped Cream and Chocolate, the 330-yen (US$2.40) dessert sandwich is actually a culinary collaboration with Kitami Hakka Tsuho, Japan’s most famous peppermint product producer.

Kitami Hakka Tsuho is headquartered in the Hokkaido Prefecture town of Kitami, which is famous for its farms growing Japanese peppermint (called hakka in Japanese). Sure enough, 7-Eleven’s new mint chocolate whipped cream sandwiches are made with Kitami-grown mint, which is renowned for its sharp flavor and cooling sensation. Kitami mint also goes into the other mouthwatering new sweet born from the partnership, the 150-yen choco mint cream mochi dumplings.

▼ You get two to a pack, presumably because there’s no way you’ll be able to restrain yourself and just eat one.

There is, however, one sad thing about all this Hokkaido mint goodness, which is that it’s only for Hokkaido, and not even all of Hokkaido, either. The choco mint whipped cream sandwich is on sale now, for a limited-time, at 136 branches in and around Kitami and Kushiro, another town located in the east part of Hokkaido (though not adjacent to Kitami). The choco mint mochi dumplings are currently even harder to come by, available at only 70 stores in the Kitami area, though they’ll go on sale across Hokkaido on August 7.

The silver/mint-green lining to this is that it’s unusual for 7-Eleven Japan to make any of its store-brand sweets region-exclusive, so hopefully these tempting choco mint treats will make their way south to other parts of Japan eventually. In the meantime, though, anyone on the SoraNews24 team traveling to Hokkaido is under strict orders to take an insulated bag with them and bring back some of these for the rest of us.

Related: Kitami Hakka Tsuho
Source: Twitter/@kitami_hakka via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Twitter/@kitami_hakka
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