Aji Ichiban

Cute store with so many different Asian candies and snacks. It was very nostalgic to me since I grew up eating these candies and snacks. I loved the variety and everything was priced well.

I loved visiting Ichiban candy's! They have a great variety of candies and imported treats! The store is clean and the staff are efficient. The owner was friendly and helped guide me around the store to find the perfect treats! Overall I had a wonderful experience and will totally make time to visit Ichiban Candies again!

Quality/Quantity - Asian candy store.
Decent selection, see pictures.
Many atypical choices.
Another business that is surprisingly very busy. I guess this shopping mall is very well located for tourists.


Atmosphere - Open 7 days a week from noon till 7pm, 8pm, or 9pm.
Very well organized. 5 employees working, 2 on the register and 3 on the "floor."
The 3 employees spent all their time cleaning, organizing, and making all the candy bins presentable and they did a great job.


Service - Self service.


Price - Expensive. Expect to pay almost double supermarket prices.


Owner Comment - Congrats on all your success, will only be back for the very hard to find/uncommon/unique snacks.

The store was impeccably designed, with bright and colorful, creative arrangements of various candies. The wide selection of candies was impressive, ranging from classic favorites to unique and hard-to-find treats. The staff members were friendly and ready to assist.

However, while the browsing experience was undoubtedly enjoyable, there was a notable downside: the prices, like the flavored KitKats were not that good but pricey.

Do you want to feel like a kid in a literal candy store? If so then come here! It's so fun and always VERY clean when we come here. Whenever we're in Chinatown we need to stop by here and the selections always change. They have some very traditional Chinese style candies, but a lot of it seems to be Japanese candy. My favorites from our last trip were the enjelly litchi pouches. Konjac jelly made with lychee juice. Oh man they're good. They're fast and I'm always amazing how they know exactly which candies to separate for each of the prices.
You pay per pound so be aware that the prices are significantly higher than you'd find in a grocery store or even online. Even though this place is expensive, I think the upside is being able to try a few pieces of each type of candy. Some of these candies you just can't seem to get anywhere else. Like my favorite jelly pouches for example. Hopefully they still have them when I come back to Chicago next time!

Very unique candy shop in the new chinatown area, they have a large selection of flavors for popular candies like kit-kats, hi-chews, etc. If are you into trying out new or hard-to-find flavored candy, this is the place.

It is on the pricy side however, kit-kats go for $1.50 each and hi-chews are by weight but can be mixed/matched. I just grabbed 1-2 of each flavor to try out, around 30 pieces were about $10

After my friend and I explored "old" Chinatown, we walked down the block and across the street into "new" Chinatown. I love that the two are so close to one another, but also separated by a street or two as well!

In this new Chinatown, we found Aji Ichiban as we were just moseying around, window shopping, and popping into any stores that were of interest to us! So when we saw an Asian candy shop??? We scurried on in!

I can't say that I've ever been to a proper Asian candy shop before. It looked exactly like one of those sickly sweet-Sweet Factory-esque candy shops, but more classy and all the compartments were filled with Asian candies! There were so many to choose from too, and a wide selection of more "modern" candies (Kit Kats, Hi Chews in every flavor imaginable), but also proper Asian classics (White Rabbit in like every flavor imaginable), and even more herbal candies/dried fruit ones as well (that I normally associated with my parents' age of people enjoying them)!

You could grab a bag and start filling it up with all the candies you wanted and then check out at the counter. Most everything my friend and I got were individually wrapped, so I think a lot of them were already priced individually, with a few things that needed to be placed on the weight for pricing. So it's definitely a mixture of the two and not just only by weight by any means!

All in all, such a great place to come and pick up snacks! My friend and I basically picked one of every single Kit Kat flavor, since it was so convenient that they were the "fun size" Kit Kats and we did a taste test of them all! Now, whenever I go to an Asian grocery store, I can pick up a whole bag of a single flavor of Kit Kat because I know which ones I prefer!

Suuuuuper overpriced and a tourist trap...a tourist trap that I fell into. Lol

I purchased a bag half full of candy, primarily different flavors of Hi-Chews and it was over $10!!! I also bought a bag of shrimp chips for $3.xx. I'm not sure how my total came out to $22. :/

Do yourself a favor and keep on walking! Lol don't fall for it like I did.

This place is organized, clean, and full of so many different kinds of candy which you can buy by the piece. My daughter and I enjoyed picking out new flavors and trying them all out. While the candy is expensive, it's also different then typical American choices, and we appreciated the fun of the variety.

You cannot beat the candy selection here. It's tops. The cost is pretty outrageous though. $1.50 for a bite sized KitKat? Yikes! There's a $10 minimum for credit card purchases, but no worries. You're not getting outta this place with less than $10 worth of candy. Lol

Come here for an experience. You and your kids will love it if you're a big fan of Japanese candy. But go to Hmart or other Asian grocery stores if you're wanting to save some bucks. This place has crazy high markups.