Hey. Don't know if you still need this or not, but here are the most commonly used ways of expressing this, from most informal to most polite:
たんじょうびおめでとう
誕生日おめでとう
お誕生日おめでとう
お誕生日おめでとうございますI would advise using Kanji only in the way I've written them - some words / prefixes, while they have kanji, are very, very infrequently used and would look odd.
I recommend '
お誕生日おめでとう' - it's pretty standard; it isn't too informal and it isn't overly polite. It is pronounced 'o-tanjoubi o-medetou', if you want to say it to him.
The hiragana characters shouldn't be too difficult, but check Wikipedia's page if you have trouble reading or writing them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiraganaIf you don't have a Japanese character reader, like Rikaichan, and aren't familiar enough with the kanji to be able to write them out when they are so small, I advise entering them (
誕,
生, and
日) in the following lookup service. You'll be able to see how to write the more complex characters, such as
誕, are written, with a step-by-step guide, if you scroll down to the 'drawing' section. The main thing to remember is that most characters begin on the left and and are then written downwards, anyway - there aren't many exceptions to this, certainly not in any of these characters. If you use the wrong stroke order, it will probably be apparent to most people, so I recommend you do it properly.
http://www.mahou.org/Kanji/Hope this helps - let me know if you need any help with anything else.
/e
I did it for you in case you had trouble navigating the site. Here you go:
http://www.mahou.org/Kanji/4342/
http://www.mahou.org/Kanji/4038/
http://www.mahou.org/Kanji/467C/This post was edited by Razzattack on Jun 25 2012 03:06pm