Japanese Emoticons

Recently it has been too cold to crawl out from under our kotatsu, meaning we haven't been doing much traveling outside the city. As I've sat huddled under blankets in front of our space heater I've had some time to keep in touch with a few of my Japanese friends through texts. It has been a very disturbing experience as I realized that even with my decent conversational Japanese skills I couldn't understand the texts at all. 顔文字, kaomoji, or Japanese emoticons, seem to be at the root of the problem.

Research has shown that culture is a huge factor in determining where you look when interpreting facial expressions. The Japanese are more prone to look at the eyes, whereas Americans look to the mouth to know whether someone is happy or sad, etc. This cultural phenomenon is perhaps most evident in emoticons. A typical American smiley face : ) and sad face : ( look thus. While the Japanese happy face (^_^) and sad face (;_;) look thus. In the American emoticons, the mouth changes to signal the mood, whereas in the Japanese kaomoji, the eyes change and the mouth remains the same. Here are some of the Japanese emoticons that stumped me when I first saw them:

1. (ToT)

2. m (_ _) m

3. (#^.^#)

4. ＿|￣|○

5. ヽ（´ー｀）┌

Can you match up the emotion with the emoticon?

A. depressed
B. mellow
C. crying
D. apologetic
E. shy

Go here for more fun with emoticons from the West and East alike.