Emoji
Back in the 80s, when Japanese business came on strong, American business people were literally taking classes in Japanese culture so that they could understand how to best communicate with, and not offend, their Japanese counterparts.
It may be time to start taking classes again, only this time in Emoji.
"Emoji (絵文字) is the Japanese name for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese wireless messages and webpages. Originally meaning pictograph, the word literally means e "picture" + moji "letter"."
The characters are used much like emoticons elsewhere, but a wider range is provided, and the icons are standardized and built into the handsets. The three main Japanese operators, NTT DoCoMo, au and
SoftBank Mobile, have each defined their own variants of emoji." (Wikipedia)
Japanese users have actually resisted the iPhone because it requires two hands to create Emoji - and given the crowded commuting conditions, Japanese have adjusted to skillfully operating their cell phones with one hand. And they're not about to give up their Emoji.
As we've all experienced, IM and email conversations can quickly go wrong when the "tone" of a comment is misunderstood. Here is where Emoji, like emoticons, can really save the day. But they can also serve as a shorthand for more complex ideas, ranging from the weather, to entertainment plans, to "good," "bad," temporarily closed," or "adults only." There are nearly 1000 of them by last count, with more proposed.
You write emoji as you would any HTML decimal character entity: for example, and will display the emoji on respective Japanese and European i-mode mobiles.
In the following example, a school bag represents entering school (school acceptance or ceremony). The little strings of code next to it are the key entries required for the symbol using Google, KDDI and Softbank.
U+FE51B, #312 #, #479
It may be time to start taking classes again, only this time in Emoji.
"Emoji (絵文字) is the Japanese name for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese wireless messages and webpages. Originally meaning pictograph, the word literally means e "picture" + moji "letter"."
The characters are used much like emoticons elsewhere, but a wider range is provided, and the icons are standardized and built into the handsets. The three main Japanese operators, NTT DoCoMo, au and
SoftBank Mobile, have each defined their own variants of emoji." (Wikipedia)
Japanese users have actually resisted the iPhone because it requires two hands to create Emoji - and given the crowded commuting conditions, Japanese have adjusted to skillfully operating their cell phones with one hand. And they're not about to give up their Emoji.
As we've all experienced, IM and email conversations can quickly go wrong when the "tone" of a comment is misunderstood. Here is where Emoji, like emoticons, can really save the day. But they can also serve as a shorthand for more complex ideas, ranging from the weather, to entertainment plans, to "good," "bad," temporarily closed," or "adults only." There are nearly 1000 of them by last count, with more proposed.
You write emoji as you would any HTML decimal character entity: for example, and will display the emoji on respective Japanese and European i-mode mobiles.
In the following example, a school bag represents entering school (school acceptance or ceremony). The little strings of code next to it are the key entries required for the symbol using Google, KDDI and Softbank.
U+FE51B, #312 #, #479
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