Emoji (絵 文字, or え も じ?) (Pronounced eh-moh-ji) is a Japanese term for image characters or emoticons used in Japanese electronic messages and Web pages.
Originally meaning pictograph, a literal word meaning "picture" (e) + "letter" (Moji). The characters used are like emoticons elsewhere, but they have a wider range of emoticons, and the icons used are standardized and embedded into the handset.
Some emoji are very specific with Japanese culture, such as entrepreneurs bending (apologizing), masked faces, white flowers saying "brilliant PR", to a group of Emoji depicting popular Japanese foods such as ramen, onigiri, sushi and curry Japan. Three major operators in Japan, NTT DoCoMo, au, and SoftBank Mobile (formerly Vodafone), all three have established their respective emoji variants. SRP.
