Emoji

Emoji (絵文字^?) is the Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese electronic messages and webpages.

Originally meaning pictograph, the word literally means "picture" (e) + "letter" (moji). The characters are used much like emoticons elsewhere, but a wider range is provided, and the icons are standardized and built into the handsets.

Some emoji are very specific to Japanese culture, such as a bowing (apologizing) businessman, a face wearing a face mask or a group of emoji representing popular foods: ramen noodles, dango, onigiri, Japanese curry, sushi. The three main Japanese operators, NTT DoCoMo, au and SoftBank Mobile (formerly Vodafone), have each defined their own variants of emoji.

Although typically only available in Japan, the characters and code required to use emoji are, thanks to the nature of software development, often present in many phones' software. As a result, some phones, such as Windows Phone 7 line, and the iPhone, allow access to the symbols without requiring a Japanese operator. Emoji have also started appearing in emailing services such as Gmail (accessed via Google Labs) in April 2009^[1] and websites such as Flipnote Hatena. Several SMS applications for Android powered phones^[2] also provide plugins that allow the use of Emoji. Apple's Mac OS X operating system supports emoji as of version 10.7 Lion.^[3]