You know what I’m talking about. ^_^

That was a Japanese textual emoji. It’s a text-based representation of the graphical emoji that you’ve seen before back 2 years ago when Apple refused to put those cute graphical emoji on all iPhones, except for Japanese ones. Eventually there were iPhone apps that would let you enable them on iPhone OS 2.x or 3.x. Now on iOS4 you can also get the textual versions too.

How? Just go into Settings – General – Keyboard – International Keyboards – Add New Keyboard… and add Japanese (Romanji).

Once you do that, just open any app that uses the keyboard (your favorite Twitter app, Messages, Mail, etc…) and hit the globe key at the bottom left (highlighted in red below). Hit that globe key until you see see the Japanese on the keyboard. If you already have the graphical emoji already installed, you’ll have to hit the globe key twice.

Hit the 123 key and you’ll see the ^_^ key in the bottom right (highlighted in red below).

Now you’ll see a little popup with a few textual emojis and a right pointing “More” arrow (highlighted in red below). Hit that “More” arrow.

Now you’ll see more textual emoji that you can scroll down the page to view. Just hit any one that you desire to put into your message.

When you’re done, just hit the globe key to get back to the regular English keyboard.

That’s all there is to it! Have fun! ^_^

Images from original article at Macapper.com. GREAT FIND!