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Kaomoji, the Japanese alternative to western emojis.

"Kao" in Japanese means "Face", and "moji" simply means "emoji" that comes from "emotion"

Basically it is a type of emoji that appeared in Japan in the early days of the Internet. Do you remember the flipphones or what it is called now the "dumb phone"? That, there is where Japanese emojis started to appear in a very simple way.

The difference with the average western emoji is that the Japanese ones tend to be more elaborated because initially they wanted to show a more specific emotion that cannot be conveyed with a simple : ) or ; ).

There is a vast amount of kaomoji that every Japanese person will recognize or at least understand what it means. I will keep adding more and more little by little, as now I am focusing my time in other projects.

Gopherpedia has some extra information.

You can search for the keyword "kaomoji" to go directly to the related information. You can visit Gopher links directly from Lagrange, GemiNaut or Gophie.

You might need to install new fonts to see all the kaomoji properly, depending on the configuration of your system. In Windows I am able to see everything correctly without having to install extra fonts. Also, depending on your fonts, some kaomojis might looks different for example, smaller than usual or different shapes, etc.

Some example of **extremely** simple Kaomojis (20.3 Kb, PNG, 852x799)

Kaomojis are mostly designed by Japanese people for Japanese communication, so you might find difficult to figure out what many of these want to convey. If you don't know much about Japanese day to day life culture, then some of them might be difficult to understand.

Some links to kaomoji websites, mostly in Japanese. Unfortunately in HTTP lands, outside Gemini or Gopher. Sorry for the inconvenience m(_ _)m

Kaomoji-san. An immense list of Kaomoji. Click on the links to access various pages.

Simeji. Another similar website. More about Simeji below.

A fairly large list of Kaomoji with some "explanation".

Another aspect that is interesting and different from wester emojis is the addition of words or expressions as a part of the kaomoji.

Many of these kaomojis come with short words such as "OK" or "What?", etc, but using Japanese "letters" rather than western letters, for example "オッケー", meaning "Ok" or "バイバイ" meaning "Bye bye". These are used to reinforce the meaning of the kaomoji. A large amount of these words are in English because that language sounds cool and modern in Japan, so there are lots of Japanenglish words, and they can be found in many places all around, from this Kaomoji to even the most traditional shrine in Japan, where you will, for sure, find some pannels or ads with English words written in Japanese "letters".

Also, you might notice how most of the Kaomojis also include some other decorative elements as well as what looks like "hands" or other body parts. So now hopefully you understand that the image above really is a list of extremely simple Kaomojis 笑

Did I said something about Simeji above? Uh, yes... And there is still other things to talk about, but I guess another day? ( ̄▽ ̄*)ゞ

That is all for now. I am already tired of searching the HTTP for the links above. So with your permission... アウト!( >◇<)/