"Help with Japanese "Paper Dragon"" Topic

Hi,
how do you say "paper dragon" in Japanese?

I had an idea for a game of aerial battle between dragons. Basically you build an origami dragon and do a dogfight.

I know the common word for Dragon would be Tatsu, and "paper" is Kami.
I think it would be cool to come up with a compound word for the name of the game… anyone help please? This is for Westerners but should not sound ridiculous to Japanese ears…

I can't help you with the name, but I think this is a cool idea, and look forward to hearing more. Makes me wonder how else you can apply origami to tabletop gaming.

I'm no expert and it's been years since I studied the language but what you want ultimately depends if you are going to have the compound word as a "kun" (Japanese reading) or "on" (Japanese reading of Chinese character). And in this case, I'd say the latter is more likely.

See here for dragon (¸o)

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BE%8D

And here for paper (¼ˆ)
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B4%99

So basically you could have:

On: ry¨±shi or r¨­shi
Kun: tatsukami but probably tatsugami

Hopefully the kanji comes out when I hit post….

But I'd ask a native Japanese speaker what he/she thinks.

Crud. So much for the special characters/kanji.

Tat su ga mi Hey I have that for dinner last night! Sounds too cool for school to me.
VR
James Mattes

"Kami no ryu" according to my Japanese wife. Almost literally, a dragon made of paper.

The wife's just told me that Tatsukami translates more as "Dragon God" than paper dragon. I think it sounds better than Kami no ryo, though, which is a bit prosaic…

Tatsukami's pretty catchy, yeah.

Cool idea, make sure to keep us updated.

Also nice to see you're attempting to avoid a "Panty Explosion" situation…

TMP link

Thanks all.

the rules will come free with every "Downloadable Dragon" (the other name I had in mind for the game, but it sounds ridiculous)sold as a PDF (you print and build as many dragons as you want,scaling them according to available play space and paper folding skills; you must supply a Flying base -- a washer or the like and a thin metal rod running through the body of the dragon).

Since I want to design the dragons with an Eastern flavor and Origami is so much part of Japanese culture, I thought of giving a Japanese name to the game.

Acharnement, Leopard Skin pillbox hat,
please ask your Japanese wives what would they think if they saw TATSUGAMI written in romaji but superimposed to the correct kanji for "dragon" and "paper", would they understand that the title is a wordplay on kami (god) and kami (paper) or just that some gaijin got confused?
first one to help me gets a free dragon in the post for Christmas :-)
Thanks
Andrea

OK Andrea, I've must quizzed the one a bit more carefully, and here's what she said:

Tatsugami would not work as the kanji do not go together; and apparently paper dragon (Kami no ryo) sounds stupid in Japanese! Her recommendation is Ryu-jin (or Ryujin), which is a better way of writing "Dragon God" and she reckons that the idea of romaji superimposed over the kanji would look fine.

Acharnement, does your wife agree with this?

The kanji won't show up here, but if you like this idea I could make a scan of them and send them to your email, or just send you a mail if yours is equipped to read Japanese characters.

Leopard skin pillbox hat: Yes, my wife says Ryu-jin would work. Those two kanji together should look impressive enough.

BTW Andrea, Paul L and Acharnement are your men, so if there are any Christmas dragons to be sent, send em to one of them :)

Thanks. I somehow think that Ryujin wouldn't work for westerners as it doesn't echo the word origami which is the basic idea of the game -- aerial battles with creatures made of paper. I might use this as the Japanese name if I ever do a Japanese language version of the rules.

For the moment, I'm thinking of a working title such as Cloudfight (Clouds are a very important feature of the game).

I'm also struggling with ways to make the flying stands, I'll probably use Litko hexes with a hole in the middle holding the thin metal rod (the ones you can get at the hobby shop for $0.90 USD each)which holds the paper dragon in flight.

Clouds figure fairly prominently in Japanese literature so it's probably not a bad choice. "Cloudwars" might be more evocative to the Japanese psyche than "Cloudfight" though. ;o)

I like "Cloudwars" better, too. thanks for the suggestion.
I have contacted a major paper mini sculptor to see if he can help me with the design. Real dragon origami are way too difficult to model -- there are some free designs available on the net but they are extremely challenging and would take too much time to sculpt for the average gamer. I'm looking for designs that anyone can put together in 10-15 minutes.
A

ganeshagames.blogspot.com

unfortunately the name Cloudwars is taken, there's another game of similar content… :-( seems the hardest part in wargaming rules today is getting a title that won't infringe any IP…

Actually, to connect with the current "Japanese psyche" you should probably give it either some cute name, English name that means absolutely nothing, or something totally not what it is.

Walking through the video store's anime section is an interesting adventure in how to name something completely off the wall.

However, if you want to connect to what the West thinks the Japanese psyche is then something along the lines of "Cloud Wars" would work.

If you are going to do a Japanese version of this game then I would strongly suggest it be a game that can be done with cards or in a very small space. CCG's are big here. However, you WILL be competing against Play Station, XBox, Nintendo DS, etc so it may kill your game. Japan is the home of electronic games and they rule here!