When I was growing up we celebrated Japanese Girls Day on March 3 and Japanese Boys Day on May 5. Well things have changed, while Girl’s Day is still in full effect, for some reason they changed Boy’s Day to…Children’s Day. LAME. As a mother of boys I think this is ridiculously unfair.

May 5th was “Tango no Sekku” where families would hang fabric carp outside their home, one fish to represent every boy in the house. I wanted to make a cupcake to celebrate my two little boys because they mean everything to me. While we are Japanese-American and no one (not even O.G.) speaks Japanese in our family, I still like to keep some traditions going (like my huge New Year’s Day party) to remind the kids of their heritage.

ingredients:
mochi cupcakes (recipe, here)
whipped cream cheese frosting (recipe, here)
gold sanding sugar
pumpkin pocky

First I frosted the cupcakes and rolled them in a sparkly gold sanding sugar.

I love to walk the aisles of markets cause you can find the craziest things. On a recent trip to the Japanese market I saw pumpkin flavored Pocky! In the words of O.G.: “Why in the world would anyone want that?” Well, I thought it was different and looked like an actual stick.

Sure I could have made the fish edible and rolled out fondant and hand painted it…but the point of my recipes is to make them easy, so let’s just go with paper fish, shall we? Ok, so I did draw the fish myself because I’m particular, but you can easily print out some pics from the internet. Cut the paper fish out and adhere with tape to the Pocky stick. Two little fishes for my two little boys.

I like how these came out, even if the day is gone, old skool peeps still remember tradition. And if you’re not Japanese, eh -just go ahead and make these for the fishing enthusiast in your house.