Can someone tell me what language this is? A friend wrote it on a card and I know he's been studying Chinese for a few years... but all the Chinese characters I look at look nothing like these.

The closest I found was Japanese radical. I don't even know what radical means, but some of them were pretty close.

Bonus: Do the last 3 characters mean/have anything to do with top/go up/rise, mountain/peak, short/length/a little?

 

Doesnt look Chinese

 

That's definitely Japanese. I think it's the hiragana alphabet (the other two being katakana and kanji [Chinese characters]), or maybe it's katakana, don't remember exactly. Can't help you with what it says though.

 

Well that's a big help at least. I was kind of just taking a stab at what other language it might be. I was looking at kanji, I'll try the others.

 

ask your friend.

 

omedetou gozaimasu = congratulations

 

Is that what the whole thing says?

I thought it might be something with climbing a great mountain... but congratulations works too.