(I have no idea if this goes here or not)
We have a friend turning sixty this week. He spent ten years in Japan, so I thought it would be fun to make him a Year of the Rat cake with kanji on it. Does 六十年 work? Should it be 六十歲?
I just looked through Google Japan’s images of birthday cakes and the standard seems to be:
お父さん
おたんじょうび おめでとう
Or
６０さい
おたんじょうび おめでとう
Kanji are hard to write in icing, so hiragana seems to be the order of the day unless it’s a simple character.
お父さん means dad, so I would not recommend that unless he is your dad.
六十歳 means 60 years of age. The kanji is a bit tricky so you could put 六十さい as SageRat mentioned.
六十年 just means 60 years.
おめでとう (omedetou) is the standard congratulations so you could add that too, of course.
Yes, sorry I should have pointed that out. I was assuming the OP understands Japanese so I just used a fill-in word figuring they would catch it.
If not, you just missed a golden opportunity to get Helena to write, “Warning: Cake is poisonous” on the birthday cake.
注: 毒入リ
死ぬよ。まじ。
How well does he speak, understand Japanese?
Japanese have special names for certain ages, including 60, which is called as follows:
還暦（かんれき）kanreki
However, if he doesn’t understand Japanese well, he may not understand this.
Thanks! I’m not writing it myself–I’m doing one of those “picture on a cake” things.
Tokyo Player–I think he’s pretty conversant, but I don’t know if he’d know that or not! Maybe.
By the way, the 60th birthday is a special event in Japan, which is why it has its own word. There’s even a particular costume men wear for their kanreki:
http://www.marumi-bridal.co.jp/costume/tyouzyu/red.jpg
The colour is important, red is for 60, purple for 70, 77 and 80, gold for 88 and 90 and white for 99 years.