The excessive use of emoticons (in Japan).

When mailing with Japanese friends, I couldn't help but notice the excessive use of emoticons.

At first I thought: "Ahw that's so cute!!"

It didn't take long for me, in possesion of a Japanese phone, to find the emoticons.

Then I thought: "Damn what does that mean?"

Followed by "??? (completely lost and mind blank)".

After some exploring and philosophizing with my friend, I came to the conclusion that there are way too many emoticons. Do humans have so many emotions that we need so much?

Simply put, if there's an object, emotion or organism the Japanese will have an emoticon for it.

For a while, the above mentioned friend (will be named C from now on) and I would use as many emoticons as possible in one mail for fun.

Which resulted in something that would look like this:

We should tomorrow, go to and ++ It better not or

Before that I need go to

Btw, did you K and A . K's really . Found in A's

Details later

Bye

After 25 minutes or so I finally produced one mail, and send it to C. After half an hour I got a mail back, saying that she would be at my place as soon as possible to gossip talk. Of course using as many emoticons as possible.

So approximately 30 seconds later I heard her door slam downstairs in our dorm, and she made her way upstairs.

After a few days or so we grew tired of this, seeing that it's really time consuming and kind of pointless.

But we still thought emoticons were nice, so at the end of every mail we would add random emoticons. Mails started to look like this:

Hi!

Do you know where I left my keys? I can't find them!!

After a while we would send mails with random emoticons only, just to kill time.

But back to the point, up to today I still do not understand why the Japanese use so many emoticons.

I think that it might be a way to be an individual, seeing how their collectivism is strong.

But really, I came to appreciate the simple :) :P :D emoticons we use in the West and quickly returned to using them upon arrival back in the Netherlands.

Untill I installed WhatsApp recently on my phone. It has all the Japanese emoticons installed. Help.

Iris

Welcome myself!!!

Here I am, on Ameblo.

Yes, I am going to write in English.

Yes, I can speak Japanese.

I might write some blogs in Japanese.

But I am a very lazy person, which explains why I rather write in English than in Japanese.

You see, I'm not Japanese. I can proudly call myself Dutch. You know, the Netherlands. Holland. Cheese. Wooden shoes. That kind of stuff.

So why make a blog? Why make a blog on a Japanese website and write in English?

I've been thinking about making a blog the past few weeks. Not that I have much to write about, but hey, who knows what kind of exciting things will cross my path in the (very near) future? So that answers question 1. As for the Japanese part, I honestly don't know. I was surfing the net for potential blog sites I could use, and suddenly Ameblo popped up.

So here I am, Ameblo.

Feel free to read. For all you English learners. My English isn't perfect though. And everybody else, of course.

Iris