Help! White guy needs Japanese translation

[takyris]

I'm running a game on Saturday in which an immortal ninja warrior is going to meet the son of the emperor the ninja clan once served. I want this to be a supremely cool moment.

I'm quite happy having the son (who is now a crazy alien-implanted chi master making deals with necromancers -- um, this is a Mutants & Masterminds game, in case that wasn't clear) speak in English for the most part, but I would really love to have the opening greeting and the closing line be in Japanese.

For the closing line, I pretty much intended to go with, "A most instructive lesson. Arigatou gozaimashita, Yanakama-sempai," as the son, who is all kinds of crazy, will be acting with faux-respect for this immortal ninja, despite the whole trying-to-kill-him thing.

(Note: That's stolen from online. It was gonna be domo-arigatou, which is what I've heard on anime.)

So what's a greeting that's on that level? I'm looking for hyper-exaggerated formality, but something a white guy can say. If it were in English, I'd be saying something like, "It is an honor beyond description to finally be in your presence," or something to that effect.

Please forgive the ignorance of this foolish white dude. I had no idea that one of my players was going to pick a ninja for his hero, and so now I have to learn.

 

[RangerWickett]

Do any of your players speak Japanese? If not, use:

"Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu."

Which basically means, "Hello" (honorably).

http://japanese.about.com/bllesson4.htm

I took 2 and a half years of Japanese, which paid off when I had a weird Japanese fey tourist in my d20 modern game. It gave him a lot of personality to drop bits of errant thoughts in his own language, all while keeping a thick 'Engrish' cast to his speech. I'm guessing you might not want to go the whole accent route, though.

 

[barsoomcore]

Who's saying what? Is the son speaking to the ninja or is the ninja speaking to the son? Which is the PC and which is the NPC? It wasn't clear from your post.

You would finish RW's statement with "Hajimemashita", which basically means, "Nice to meet you."

If I understood the context a little better I might be able to help you out more.

 

[takyris]

PC: A 70-year-old ninja from a line of immortal warriors, living in the modern day. (They're immortal Highlander-style -- until someone kills them in a specific way.)

Son of Emperor: A crazy-ass young man who has been living with aliens since his father, the emperor back in the 1400s, was killed by a new family trying to take power. He's still alive thanks to the aliens, but has been living in a chaos dimension, likely with time dilation (although he speaks modern Japanese, not ancient Japanese, if that makes a difference) and is bat-poop crazy... and he blames the PC's family for his father's death, since the family was the equivalent of the secret service for the emperor.

I'm playing the son, and my goal is to have him be overtly very respectful of an "honored elder", but with a mocking edge.

Does that help?

 

[takyris]

RW: Thanks! Yeah, I won't be doing a full thick accent. He'll have a voice distinct from mine, but most of my bad guys do, just so the heroes know who's talking.