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A few weeks ago we had this party for a 14 year old girl who is crazy about anime, manga, and sushi

JAPANESE PARTY IDEAS: TEENAGER

INVITATIONS: I printed the invites on paper and then glued them onto plain white paper fans. I used kudasai font which I downloaded from here. I put a strip of Japanese patterned paper around the fan and then a strip with the person’s name over the top. The invitation asked the girls to dress in either Japanese traditional or modern street fashion. One girl came as an anti-whaling protester

DECORATIONS: I hung a bunch of red small sized parasols on a string across the room. When the party was over these were given to each girl as a party favour. Pink and white might have been a better choice but we used red and white. I got these parasols and the fans from here

Paper lanterns in another room

Two coffee tables pushed together with cushions on the floor

Place settings were red origami lotus flowers with each girl’s name. In case you don’t know, the easiest way to make an origami anything is by watching a YouTube clip. Lotus flower here

FOOD:

I bought a bunch of Japanese sweets and snacks from a small Japanese shop in Perth

I made sushi cakes (also called twinki sushi). There are no green roll-ups in Australia as far as I know so you have to get the ones with the three colours and cut the green bit off and stretch it a bit and then wrap it around a slice of mini swiss roll. Put cream and sprinkled lollies on top

I got a platter of sushi from Pink Rice in Fremantle

I cooked a large pot of miso noodle soup and just added chopped spring onions

DRINKS: Peach iced tea served in tiny bowls

CAKE: I made this Hello Kitty cake the day before. It was actually a major hassle. I had read that to make white butter icing you substitute the butter with copha. This didn’t work for me AT ALL. I ended up using just plain icing sugar and hot water which also didn’t work very well. I made the whiskers by inbedding popsticks in the cake then placing liquorice strips on each one

ACTIVITIES AND GAMES: This party went for four hours from noon to 4pm

300 RICE GRAIN CHALLENGE/CHOPSTICK COMPETITION

Measure a small cap full of uncooked rice into each bowl (do this before eating as you can use the noodle bowls). Each girl had to move the rice from the bowl to a cup using chopsticks. The first one to finish was the winner

ANIME

The girls watched a few episodes of The Scrapped Princess. When choosing an anime be careful about the rating. This one was PG

CRAFT: JAPANESE HAIR BANDS

The girls made button hair bands using Japanese fabric. Instructions here

I attached the bands to each button back to save time

KARAOKE/ORIGAMI/MANGA TAROT

In a spare room I set up the Playstation with SingStar and left origami paper with intructions, a manga tarot set, snacks, and just left them to it

MUSIC: Try and get hold of a Japanese Pop cd

LOOT BAGS: A noodle box filled with unusual Japanese snacks and a Hello Kitty keyring. As well as a parasol from the room decoration

[Some of the above things are Chinese, for example the bowls and the parasols]