^_^ they should make it standard for all language.

Those are Emoticons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticons

Emoji are the icons and pictures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji

Emoticons are enabled by default, you need an iPhone app, there are free ones, to enable Emoji. My guess is that they are not enabled by default because not all phones display them correctly.

This isn't a few feature, they just made it more accessible. They are called kaomoji in Japanese or face characters. When you'd type it in Japanese ???? the same list would appear. You can still do that now too. There have been a few hidden features for the Japanese that Apple could of done a better job of showing to people.

You can also still enable them this way, which results in an Emoji keyboard under International instead of japanese: http://www.waterworld.com.hk/en/spell_number_easter_egg

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple is targeting a feature request from Japanese users in iOS 4 with new support for several dozen "official" Emoji emoticons accessible from the Japanese Romaji keyboard.

After activating the Japanese Romaji keyboard (used to enter Roman-style characters), reader Davide Crudo noted that a new character key appears on the numbers keyboard: the "^_^" smile.

Typing the key inserts a smile emoticon and presents a popup listing of alternatives below it. Clicking the arrow, or hitting space bar to cycle through the options, brings up an editing panel for choosing from around 50 different alternatives that are commonly used in Japan.

Users can flick through the pages of different Emoji character sequences by touch, or cycle through options by tapping the spacebar.

Once entered, an emoticon sequence acts like a regular block of characters. After entering an emotion in Notes, its default Marker Felt font is changed to Helvetica for all text within that note.

My God they've done it. I mean, I know we all had scientists around the world working on this, but I had no idea the Japanese had cracked it. Why wasn't this bigger news? How did this get by me?

It's a whole new world, ladies and gentlemen.

but we can't edit them, can we?

While I like the notes font, I would like to be able to use Helvetica as well. Sigh! Someday.

This is NO "emoji", ("picture characters") but instead "kaomoji" ("face characters"). The former are one-character wide graphical icons, (akin to emoticons) almost universally compatible accross the three japanese carriers (bar iPhone). The latter are simply combinations of parentheses/punctuation/speciall characters to resemble faces.