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    Home » How To Stuff » How to (DIY)

    How to Type Japanese Emoticons

    February 6, 2020 by Karen 62 Comments

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    If you're looking for fun and weird look no further than Japan. Ever. They have both markets covered.  So it makes sense that their emoticons are even more fun and weird than ours. Get ready for Japanese emoticon fun.

     

     

     
    \ (^_^) /

     

    For those of you unfamiliar with what an emoticon is, it's this  :)  or this  :(   If you don't recognize these I'm sorry to inform you it's possible you might be dead. Or a cat, or a jar of mayonnaise. Whatever you are, you're not a living, walking, talking human because emoticons are EVERYWHERE.

    Table of Contents

    • What's an emoticon?
    • How to Type Japanese Emoticons
    •  

    What's an emoticon?

    An emoticon uses keyboard characters to represent faces and things.  Emojis on the other hand are the more lifelike evolution of emoticons.  

    Here you see a happy face emoticon on the left and a happy face emoji on the right.

     

    :)  VS  🙂

     

    So how did all of this start anyway? 

    History of the Emoticon

    Date first used: September 19th, 1982 at 11:44 a.m.

    Inventor: Dr. Scott Fahlman

    Dr. Scott Fahlman a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, first proposed his new invention - the smiley face emoticon - in an email to colleagues after some computer messages joking about elevators crashing were interpreted as truth. 

    He decided that if this was how people were going to communicate online then they'd better come up with some way to identify certain sentences as jokes.  They needed what he called a "joke marker".  He and his colleagues toyed with various keyboard characters to represent a joke. 

    For days they looked down at their keyboards trying to determine WHICH keyboard character was the funniest.  Was it the “%,”  the “*,” or the  “#” ? They also considered the ampersand, (&) since someone decided it looked like a "jolly fat man in convulsions of laughter."  I'm not sure about you, but I do not see a jolly laughing man.

     

     

    &

     

     

    If anything I see a baby that just fell on its bum.

    The debate was ended when Fahlman, computer nerd extraordinaire, sent this message: 

     

    19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman  :-)
    From: Scott E Fahlman

    I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

    :-)

    Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:

    :-(

    message quote from Narratively


    You can see that over the past 30 years we've shortened :-) to :).  Because who has the time for a nose.

    If you look at these things, :) :(  from a sideways perspective as he points out, you can see that they represent a smiling face or a frowning face.  Someone at some point became especially brilliant and invented the winking face  ;) That's about as advanced as we've become in North America when it comes to emoticons. 

     

     

    :)   :(   ;)

     

     

    You've got your happy, your sad and your i'm telling you the truth, but don't want you to be offended so I'll put this ambiguous wink here to soften the blow.

    The sideways emoticon is NOT the way it's done in Japan.  Japanese text emoticons are ready to read straight on.  

    No need to turn your phone, your head or your eyeballs sideways, which is especially important in Japan. In North America if you tip your head, become dizzy and stumble a bit, the scariest thing you'll fall into is the Grand Canyon.  Do the same thing in Japan and you could fall  into a Japanese hipster dressed up as a Hello Kitty Storm Trooper. Eek.

    A lot of their emoticons are based on the Japanese keyboard, but there are a few that work with a regular North American keyboard.  

    Please enjoy the Japanese emoticon versions of angry,  happy, surprised, tired, excited, dead and ...  John Lennon.  I know!  What???   \_(*o*)_/

    Copy & Paste Emoticons

     

    How to Type Japanese Emoticons

     

     

     

    Would you like to save this stuff?

    We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.

    (>_<)

    Angry/frustrated - left bracket, underscore, less than, right bracket 

     

     

    (^_^)

    Happy - left bracket, caret, underscore, caret, right bracket 

     

     

    ( -_-)

    Mellow - left bracket, space, hyphen, underscore, hyphen, right bracket

     

     

    (°J°)

    John Lennon - left bracket, degree sign, capital J, degree sign, right bracket

     

     

    (o_o)

    Surprised - left bracket, capital O, underscore, capital O, right bracket

     

     

    (=J=)

    Tired - left bracket, equal, capital J, equal, right bracket

     

     

     

    (^_^) /

    Yay! - backslash, space, left bracket, caret, underscore, caret, right bracket, space, forward slash

     

     

    _(*o*)_/

    Oh no/What? - backslash, underscore, left bracket, asterisk, small O, asterisk, right bracket, underscore, forward slash

     

     

    (X_X)

    Dead - left bracket, capital X, underscore, capital X, right bracket

     

     

    (^._.^)~

    Cat - left bracket, caret, period, underscore, period, caret, right bracket, squiggly

     

     

    I know. I thought it was bizarre they had a John Lennon emoticon too. When exactly would you need to use that?

    Wife:  Hey honey. Could you pick up some of those things (°J°) sang about?

    Husband: Huh??

    Wife: Strawberries. Could you pick up strawberries?

     

    So as you're texting, emailing, Instagramming, Facebooking or Tweeting at someone whip some of these out. 

    It's nice to use these more elaborate emoticons. It shows the recipient you think they're important enough to use more than a generic emoticon, just not important enough to use actual words.  

    Have a good weekend!

    Karen's handwritten signature.

    How to Type Japanese Emoticons

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    1. Miss Freckles

      April 06, 2013 at 7:06 pm

      Too funny! These are great. I'll be using these to weird out my friends with.

      Reply
    2. Kristin

      April 05, 2013 at 11:30 pm

      Chicken emoticon:

      ( :>

      Or, if you must have it untilted:
      . .
      V

      But misses the top of the head.

      Reply
    3. AnnW

      April 05, 2013 at 7:59 pm

      PS Because of you, I am putting in a garden and starting plants from seeds.!! See what kind of power you have? Ann

      Reply
      • Karen

        April 05, 2013 at 10:10 pm

        It is kind of freaky. But really ... it is the point of this blog of mine. ~ karen!

        Reply
    4. AnnW

      April 05, 2013 at 7:58 pm

      You are So Much Fun! Getting unto it now!

      Reply
    5. Shauna

      April 05, 2013 at 4:11 pm

      I just all the many things I learn on your blog. This is definitely a Happy Friday post;) :) \(^_^)/

      Reply
      • Shauna

        April 05, 2013 at 4:13 pm

        [love] that is the missing word in my comment above\_(*O*)_/

        Reply
        • Karen

          April 05, 2013 at 4:24 pm

          LOL. ~ karen

    6. Barbie

      April 05, 2013 at 2:11 pm

      The John Lennon one just inspires me to write an e-mail to my hubs and use it like 14 times in my sentence! Just to get a laugh outa him! LOL

      Reply
    7. Nancy Blue Moon

      April 05, 2013 at 11:57 am

      Very cute! I am scared about next week though!!

      Reply
    8. Selva Iris

      April 05, 2013 at 10:38 am

      JA! The REAL cat emoticon is this: =^.^=

      Thank you for the fun (✿◠‿◠)♥

      Reply
    9. Lisa

      April 05, 2013 at 9:03 am

      http://baetzler.de/humor/ascii_cows.var

      I always loved those cows.

      Reply
      • Anemone

        April 05, 2013 at 11:58 pm

        Australian cows. HA!

        Reply
        • Charmaine

          February 07, 2020 at 1:29 am

          None of these links are any good anymore. :(

        • Lisa

          February 10, 2020 at 1:55 am

          (;_;)

    10. Feral Turtle

      April 05, 2013 at 8:59 am

      Haha! Had to text some of these to hubby this morning!

      Reply
    11. Mary Werner

      April 05, 2013 at 8:28 am

      How would you do a Fats Domino? Maybe color it blue? It is sort of like playing sharades with your fingers.

      Reply
    12. Jayne

      April 05, 2013 at 7:54 am

      I love the John Lennon ^..^ ~

      Reply
    13. Reg

      April 05, 2013 at 7:38 am

      \ (^_^) / fun.

      Reply
    14. qtpuh2tme

      April 05, 2013 at 5:23 am

      I'm kinda partial to the sideways ones, myself. ~y< My cat, Tylli.

      Reply
    15. Nancy

      April 05, 2013 at 5:06 am

      We have some Japanese dollar and a half stores around here. Most of the stuff makes me giddy with joy! i love it all and most of it is useless, for me anyway. I don't think this has anything to do with emoticons.

      Reply
    16. Chris

      April 05, 2013 at 3:14 am

      Next week?! _(*o*)_/
      Chris '_'

      Reply
    17. Auntiepatch

      April 05, 2013 at 2:41 am

      I just sign mine =^..^=

      Reply
    18. Toronto Boy

      April 05, 2013 at 1:52 am

      ≤( (•v•) )≥ <---- Mother Hen ...

      ÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖ <---- And her baby chicks ...
      ((((()))))) <---- Sitting in the nest!

      Reply
    19. Centi

      April 05, 2013 at 1:09 am

      You can also type a cat with whiskers:
      =^._.^=

      (which is nearly as useful as John Lennon)

      Reply
    20. gloria

      April 05, 2013 at 12:31 am

      Haha, love the pun, "...you could become disoriented."

      Reply
    Newer Comments »

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