we remember being a teenager in the late 1990's and discovering that phones in japan (specifically [softbank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank_Telecom) phones, beginning in 1997) had these neat little cute pictographs called [emoji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji).
back then, when most people who even *had* internet had slow sub-56kbps connections, [emoticons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon) were more frequently used. or, if you were *really* cool and cutting-edge, [kaomoji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaomoji) were much more expressive & popular.
(at least, they were more popular among my small corner of the internet i frequented).