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Hidden smartphone feature reveals a strange Japanese emoticon

Typing this Japanese word into your iPhone or Android device will introduce you to some very unusual characters.

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Keyboard app shares most common emoji by country, Japan’s are completely different from others

A case of cultural differences or linguistic ones?

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Japanese survey finds top 10 emoji that “make you look like an old man”

ಠ_ಠ

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Japan’s 10 favorite emoji for Twitter, and how they compare to the rest of the world

Only three emoji make both lists.

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Cardcaptor Sakura gets a special limited-time Twitter emoji to celebrate cherry blossom season

The beloved anime magical girl is helping flowers bloom on social media.

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Poop ice cream drops in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku neighborhood

Unchi-kun looks the part, thankfully tastes like something else entirely.

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What’s the real meaning of Japan’s “burning tofu” emoji?

It’s not fire, and it’s not food, but every Japanese person immediately understands the symbol that has the rest of the world scratching their heads.

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Newest Japanese Twitter craze has users guessing movies using only emoji as hints

A picture is worth a thousand words, but only if you can guess it right.

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Japan would like to remind you that “emoji” has nothing to do with “emotion”

Common sense might lead you to believe that “emoji” is simply a variation of “emoticon,” but Japanese common sense tells a whole different story.

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Here’s how to draw ice cream without it looking like the manga poop emoji

Dessert, not defecation.

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A brief history of emoji, language standards, and why you can text piles of poo to your friends

You likely know that emoji originated in Japan, but do you know how they ended up basically everywhere in the world?

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What are Facebook’s five new “reactions” called in Japan?

In Japan, you don’t “like” something on Facebook, you “ii ne” it. But what about the five other “reactions” that Facebook has just added?

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Japan’s net users are confused and creeped out by Skype’s new “dancing turkey” emoticon

Japanese netizens are both creeped out and confused by this new Thanksgiving/Christmas emoji from Skype.

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Japanese man shares photo of near-perfect ‘poop emoji’ in hand cream, Twitter goes nuts

When Japanese Twitter user @nasuiro posted this picture of a blob of hand cream last week, he probably had no idea that it would end up being retweeted over 41,000 times…

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Oxford Dictionaries picks single emoji as Word of the Year, seemingly forgets what “word” means

Oxford Dictionaries, the online arm of the publisher of the Oxford Dictionary of English, has announced that its 2015 Word of the Year is an emoji. No, not the word “emoji,” but a single, specific emoji.

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Emoji is the new black: Could emoji fashion be the next “kawaii” trend?

Recently, with elements of the Japanese language and its culture starting to be adopted by people in countries the world over, we hear the word “emoji” being used incredibly often overseas. In fact, both the word “emoji” and the digital images themselves have become pretty much universal.

And now, those emoji that I knew from my cell phone screen here in Japan have even been turned into fashion icons!

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YouTube channel recreates emoji in real life with hilarious, horrifying results 【Video】

Have a convention coming up and you’re scrounging for last-minute cosplay ideas? Perhaps you’re on a super tight budget and need to make a costume out of the bare minimum.

Well we have the answer for you! Hong Kong-based YouTube channel DigitalRev TV recently put up a video where they tried their best to recreate several of the most popular emoji in real life. Some of the results are ridiculous, others are scary, but all are truly inspirational to the lovers of minimal costuming out there.

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Emoji break out of their chat boxes to tell story of Disney’s Frozen

With the upcoming Disney animated short Frozen Fever set to debut in theatres on March 13, you might be in need of a recap of the original film, so check out this two-and-a-half-minute video of Frozen as told through emoji.

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Forget your paints and pencils! Emojis are the best new art medium!

If you’re as addicted to your phone as we are, there’s a good chance you can draw 95 percent of the emoji you know with your eyes closed. Much to the chagrin of high school English teachers everywhere, it can sometimes seem that half of our communication is taken up by the colorful little faces. And it’s understandable–they can express quite a bit!

But thanks to a new site, anyone can freely combine emoji for a hundred times more expressiveness. That’s exactly what Kazuki Takakura, art director for a Tokyo theatre company, did–and the results are nothing short of spectacular! And slightly nightmarish.

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What’s that emoji? Let’s take a look at Japanese culture with these texting emoticons!【Part 2】

In Part 1 of this article, we learned some fun facts about three iconic foods so beloved by the Japanese that they, yup, became icons—how an old lady and a samurai gave birth to the first rice cracker; what it means to be called a pudding-head in Japan; and how a classic 1960s manga cemented the way oden would be illustrated for decades to come.

So get ready for Part 2, in which I’ll attempt to sift through millennia of history and get you further acquainted with three more emoticons!

First we’ll look at the mythical tengu, a complex, multifaceted creature that in modern times pops up in things like Digimon and the Mega Man series. Then we’ll check out a New Year’s decoration that may have originated from taketaba, a shield made from bundled bamboo that became necessary once firearms were introduced. To close, we’ll explore the customs and lore surrounding the Tanabata festival, including the romantic legend of Orihime and Hikoboshi, who are both star-crossed lovers and actual stars in the sky.

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