It's officially the 19th in Japan and that means one thing: Riko Sakurauchi's birthday is once again here! The days have been passing very slowly while I waited for this day, but now it's finally here and we can celebrate! I prepared three little gifts too, the gift of food, art and song, so make sure to check them out too!

This year was quite a turbulent one for me. I moved out from my parent's place into my own apartment, I went to Uni and also struggeled with mental health a lot – but at least, Riko was always right there. I actually take my neso to all my doctors appointments, and you bet she was there when I got my drivers license or had important exams! Our biggest adventure this year was visiting my friend of many years, akaoi, at the other side of the country in June for the Dokomi-convention. Riko even met Hanamaru and Kotori, but she was quite intimidated by them – wasn't Hanamaru supposed to be shorter than her?

SIF – this Year, I was once again blessed by Riko! I'm pretty close to owning all her cards, and even her birthday scout (you can see it here) was very successful. I was scared of getting not a single new card since I only need so few, but I came out with three new SRs and 2 Urs. So, I finally managed to make a dream come true – a full team with 9 different Riko Urs, and it even looks amazing because I have three cards of every Attribute! (Album here)I'm collecting every Riko card I can and I'm at 68/79 cards now! Here is what I'm missing (I actually noticed while looking through that I'm missing two Srs, not one^^“):

SRs: Easter, Skating | SSRs: Christmas | URs: Swimsuit, 6th anni, BlueRay, Christmas, China, Valentines, SIFAC

Birthday Cake!

For last year's birthday, I made pumpkin cookies with little sugar bats for Riko – Pumpkins for autumn, my favorite season and the time where her birthday falls, and bats for Yoshiko, her friend and potential love-interest. This year, I wanted to make an actual birthday cake and ended up looking at dozens of cake ideas. I originally wanted to make a piano cake, but in the end I settled on this Uchiura sea cake inspired by van goth and another prevalent autumn goodie - blueberries! Riko is an artist herself and so I'm sure a cake that references an amazing painting would be a good fit for her. The recipe is an actual confectionery recipe and I prepared it with great care. I even ended up eating it with my family at 17:00 on the 18th, which corresponds to 00:00 on the 19th in Japan! The cake tastes amazing, I love it a lot and I hope that Riko loves it too... The layers are as follows: blue/mint colored cake batter (I put blue in there but it ended up looking minty) with blueberries, a lemon curd middle with whipped cream on top which was not too sweet or sour, and frosting on top that was mildly blueberry-flavoured too I tried to make the frosting a bit sakura-colored for Riko's image color too, but sadly you only see it on the cut cake... However, my roommate even came to visit and helped me prepare everything, they are a LL-fan themself and their best girl is Riko's friend You (You-neso and Riko-neso were playing while they waited for the cake)! I will leave the recipe in the comments in case anyone wants to make this cake too, it takes quite some time (I spent about 6 hours on this), but it was well worth the effort.

Birthday Art!

I was drawing a lot these days, and I wanted to once again make a beautiful picture for my best girl. I decided on my favorite SR, which is TimeTravel! The final piece is a mix-up of the unidolized and idolized one since I love her unidolized hair and headband as well as earrings, and I also really love the cyber dress. (this is actually the first neck I drew in over two years!)

Birthday Music!

Hey, Hey! Listen!

I actually did it – for the first time in my life I actually finished a saxophone recording. I even made a little band, it was very fun and I'll definitely do it again. I definitely leaned a lot about improving the audio quality and the program, so next time it'll be even better! For Riko's birthday, I of course chose Pianoforte Monologue as my song for her. The only LL-Song I ever played was „Sakana ka nanda ka?“ so I was not sure how this would turn out... however, I'm very pleased with the result! Riko definitely would find some parts where I could have done even better, but for now I'm done.

And with that, my little birthday table for Riko is complete! Here's to another great year with my best girl. Also, thanks a bunch for reading till here, you are amazing too =)

Best Birthday Wishes! ~Mikan

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