Emoticon and smileys is big in the Internet world especially Japan. In Japanese emoticon is called Kaomoji (顔文字 or facemark), which means texts that formed a facial expression. Kaomoji can be used and seen especially on chat room, text messaging, e-mail etc. Sometimes I am very impressed on the cuteness and wide range of Japanese emoticons.
The reason of Japanese Kaomoji can be so playful is because they are using 2-byte character, allowing more varieties on the look of facemark. For example, a Japanese “happy” kaomoji could have more than 30 kinds of varieties. Japanese facemark is cute but certainly it’s hard to type it out. However I found a way to turn Hiragana words to cute Kaomoji easily by using Japanese IME keyboard.
