顔文字 Japanese Emoticons

このポウストが日本語ですごくむずかしい！

日本語はもじが4しゅある、らしい。そうかなあ。。。じゃあ、文字が4しゅじゃなくて6しゅだよ！

けいたいにピクトグラムのにボタンある。ピクトグラムが250ぐらい、時々かんたんだが時々むずかしい。　でも、今はつかう。

でも、文字を6がしゅね？はい、6がしゅだよ！顔文字ね。顔文字がたくさんある。
こんご顔文字をわかるかな。。。 d=(^o^)=b

言葉
顔文字（かおもじ）- emoticon
らしい - apparently
もじ - written characters
がしゅ - counter for scripts?
ー種（－しゅ）- kinds of ...



This one was difficult to translate, the Japanese is simplified...!

People say that Japanese has 4 scripts - the two phonetic scripts Hiragana and Katakana (42 symbols each), Kanji (approximately 2000 in everyday use), and Romaji (romanisation of Japanese words). Well there are not 4 scripts, there are 6...

On mobile phones there is a button for pictograms. There are about 250 or so of these, more with each new generation of mobile phone, some of which are easily recognisable like the picture of a sun, some of which aren't.
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/service/imode/make/content/pictograph/
However, I do use these pictograms quite a lot now.

But yes, I mentioned that there are 6 scripts, not 5. Which leads me to the subject of this post, Japanese Emoticons!

There are only about 20 Western emoticons in everyday use, of which I use no more than about 5, tops. There are 100s of Japanese emoticons in everyday use it seems - http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks/index.html
And they keep coming up in my emails...

:(

This is the Western emoticon to describe how I feel about this. Imagine this, you're trying really hard to learn Japanese, but when you receive an email you have to open a new webpage to Google what the emoticons mean, let alone any new Japanese words... And the emoticons are slightly open to different interpretations... Surprise surprise... There are about 50 on my phone for easy access... I'm gradually learning them. Interestingly, you can also type in the Japanese word on your phone and then convert it into an emoticon, in the same way as kanji. So maybe emoticons are just new kanji?

Here is an example of a very common one that I like m(_ _)m
This can mean sorry or extremely grateful - the brackets are the head, the lines are the eyes, and outside of the brackets are the arms or hands. Now imagine someone sitting at a table and bowing very deeply with their hands on the table - very descriptive and easy to recognise as a result!

Give me time, I will embrace Japanese emoticons in the end...

Me embracing Japanese emoticons d=(^o^)=b