Claire's 13th Birthday Party

 My daughters are anime fanatics, so when Claire was turning thirteen, we decided to throw her an anime/Japanese themed birthday party. It was supposed to be a surprise for her, but the day before the party, she caught me making some of the decorations when she came home from school. But even though she was getting suspicious, my parents still took her to Game Stop, hours before the party, so that we can set everything up.

The cherry blossom on the background is a vinyl wall decal we got from Amazon.

This adorable plush creature on the cake is called a Mokona, and is a character from Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. We used it as a cake topper but it's actually a coin purse. I placed a piece of wax paper underneath it so it doesn't get any frosting on it. I also made the teeny tiny party hat , and the CLAIRE banner.

I used google translate for the food labels, the framed image, chopstick holders, candy wrappers and favor tags. The chibi characters on the food labels were pictures we found online. We printed them out, cut them and then used foam adhesive to stick them on the food labels. Aren't they cute?

 The kids had fun trying out the Japanese food, but I think they were relieved when we ordered pizza. I guess it takes some getting used to.

Some of the games they played were similar to the games we had for Bea's 15th birthday. We had the chopsticks game - whoever gets the most jelly beans by using the chopsticks wins, fan the balloon game - each person gets one balloon, whoever manages to make the balloon stay up in the air the longest by fanning it, wins, and our own version of fukuwarai - a game similar to pin the tail on the donkey, but instead of using a face, we used a picture of Pikachu. The prize for the games were Hershey's Chocolate bars. I just replaced the wrappers with the a paper with the word Congratulations in English and also in Japanese.

After the games, the kids went to the living room and played video games.

These were the party favors, inside the bags were some Japanese candies. The kids thought it was pretty cool seeing their names written in Japanese characters.

  

I linked this post to these wonderful parties:

A to Zebra Celebrations : Link Party Tuesdays

Love and Laundry : Weekend Wonders

Memories by the Mile : Tuesday Trivia and Link Party

Thirty Handmade Days : Pity Party