Kaomoji: Japanese Text Faces

Japanese text faces read upright rather than sideways, built from wide Unicode characters: (´。• ᵕ •。`) for cute, (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ for rage. The name combines kao (face) and moji (character).

Western emoticons like :) are read sideways, emoji are pictures rendered by the platform, and kaomoji are upright faces made of text. Kaomoji stay exactly as you typed them on every platform, since they are just characters.

Mostly you copy them, they use Japanese and other scripts no single keyboard covers. Japanese IMEs can convert words like kaomoji into faces, but click-to-copy is the practical route outside Japan.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ is flipping a table in frustration. And yes: ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) is the companion face calmly putting it back.