my dad is awesome

my cousin sent me a message saying happy bday and he threw in some japanese characters: 誕生日おめでとう！ i wonder if that will come out. anyway, i sent it to my dad asking him what it meant. this is the reply:
---

The first three characters written in Chinese means 'Birthday'. The last five characters are written in 'Hiragana' it says 'Congratulation'.

So, the Birthday is pronounced as 'Tan jou bi' and Congratulation is pronounced as 'O me de tou'. The last two hiraganas are combined to pronounce 'tou'.

The Japanese language is written in three types of characters in combination. Kanji or chinese character, Hiragana, and Katakana.

Kanji characters have meanings by themselves, but Hiragana and Katakana are just like the English alphabet. Both of them have basic 48 characters and they are combined to make up any words. Difference between Hiragana and Katakana are the usage. Katakanas are used when the words are foreign in nature or there are no Japanese originated word of meaning. Example; Bucket is pronounced 'Ba ke tsu', Glass is pronounced 'Ga la su', Cup is pronounced 'Koppu' and so forth.

This was your simple Japanese lesson for today .... so, Congratulation on your 29th Birthday or Tanjoubi Omedetou!

Yosh,
---

i like it that he always refers to himself as yosh and not dad. typical voicemail: "hey it's your dad, it's yosh." he's funny.

there is your japanese lesson for today.