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This facade picture is actually from last year (year 2010), as I only took the picture from outside then and didn’t write the post about it. But all the other pictures I listed below are from this summer (2011) when I visited there last month or so. ^ ^;
I noticed I have not completed a post about Yamashiroya since I made a link to the Kawaii Shop page. Yamashiroya is like Kiddyland and they always carry fun toys and popular character goods such as One Piece.
Kaomoji goods are so popular over here. I see they are cute enough to be treated as a sort of character.
While Kiddyland deals with popular characters such as Rilakkuma, Snoopy and etc., Yamashiroya seems to have game and anime characters. Whichever it is, it’s nice as long as it is cute. I didn’t recognize these cats, but later I learned they are from the very famous Japanese game titled Monster Hunter and the name of the cat (I don’t know which colored one) is “Airu”. Video game characters can be as cute as this!
Speaking of video game, everyone knows Mario right? I think they’re so cute even though they are enemies when I play Mario. ^ ^
Oh, I found a panda version this time!
You don’t know what I’m talking about? Some time ago I found the ones of cat and dog versions. Now panda version is available! How cute!!
It’s Hello Kitty’s solar-powered cellphone charger. There were Rilakkuma, Winnie the Pooh, and Stitch as well. Maybe these cute characters will decrease the fear of emergency…I hope. I could get one to prepare for another earthquake in the future…? (I wish to live in a country that is free from earthquake!>_<)
Doraemon is still popular…He is like a forever hero to kids.
But the most popular hero will be Anpanman.
I noticed I was on the kid’s floor when I found these tiny socks for boys. I know how boys can be crazy about trains. It’s cute their feet always look like trains with these socks on. lol
I also found some Blythe goods as well as Blythe dolls and her wigs and accessories.
There were many popular anime characters but above all, One Piece was most outstanding. So many kind of kawaii iphone cases with One Piece characters!
Before I left, I found some bizarre business card cases. They are weird rather than kawaii… I wonder who wants this…(*_*)
When I asked one of the shop workers if I can take pictures, he said it’s no problem!!!! Yay! This is not common in Japan. Most of the time I am asked not to take photos. ^ ^ How do you like Yamashiroya?
Thanks to the suggestion from one of the TKE readers the other day that I can write about Japanese emoticons, I’d like to share with you what kind of emoticons we usually use with cell phones in Japan. Emoticons are called “emoji” in Japanese. (“e”= picture “moji”= letters/characters) I think we have a lot of kawaii emoticons, some are still, while others even have a little movement.
There are basically 3 major cell phone (= keitai denwa in Japanese, and people call it “keitai” to make it short.) companies in Japan: Docomo, Softbank and au. Each company has developed its own emoticons but they are to be interpreted to the similar or equivalent ones when the email with emoticons is sent to someone whose cell phone belongs to other company. For instance, let’s say a boy has Docomo’s cell phone. When he sends an email with Docomo’s emoticons to a girl who has au’s cell phone, she will receive the email with emoticons translated into au’s emoticons. When there are no equivalent, it can be translated as a word that represents the emoticon.
For computers we enjoy wide variety of Kaomoji (“kao” means face in Japanese.) Kaomoji is just a combination of Japanese letters, characters and codes typed by Japanese keyboard. Thus anyone can make creative and expressive facial expressions from any combinations of the Japanese computer keyboard. I’ll show you some examples. (Disclaimer: credit to Kaomoji Paradise where you can see kaomoji sorted by the situation or emotions such as “laugh” or “nod” or “run”.)
Further more, ascii art is more than just an icon but it’s really an art!
Disclaimer: credit to Doko AA.
But of course, the people who actually create or use ascii art are very limited. Also busy people do not use many Kaomoji and instead they may use “w” as a smiley (note: too many “w” makes people annoyed. e.g. “wwwwwww”) or something like 1 Kanji letter in parenthesis (see below for example.)
What do you think of Japanese Emoji, Kaomoji and ascii art? How are they compared with yours? Do you have similar emoticons in your country or do you have interesting emoticons? Hope you enjoy this post.
Posted by: kirin on 
Jul 28th, 2011 | 
Filed under: Kawaii Shop
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