1. Introduction
　 Studying abroad gives you a great opportunity to think not only about that new country you are living in, but also about your own homeland and even about other countries too. To be in contact with different cultures and see their way of living, habits, backgrounds and characters is a unique opportunity for a young student, like all of us, still in the beginning of our lives, to learn things that otherwise we probably could not learn: to see in the similarities and differences between different countries the same human beings we all are, and so learn about ourselves too. But in my opinion, the most important things we learn in these occasions as foreign students are those we deal with in our daily lives. With this essay, I would like to explain one of these things I have realized, a very common habit that young people have in Japan and use it as a representative symbol to discuss about a more serious topic, about the social situation related to it.
　 One of the most impressive things I saw during my first year in Japan was the very popular use of the so-called “kaomoji” (顔文字, literally “kao” means “face” and “moji”, “letter”) in the text messages I received. Not that in my country we do not use this kind of symbols, but the frequency I see them here is quite different from that I was used to. I confess that sometimes I still have to think for some seconds to guess the meaning of some of those I am not used to or even to write them myself. Anyway, the aim of this essay is to discuss the “kaomoji” usage in Japan and the “kaomoji” as an indicator of a quite serious social problem. I am not an expert in the matter, but I think no experience other than sending-and-receiving e-mails and talking to your friends is needed to think about it either.
　 Maybe a good beginning for this short essay would be the definition for the “kaomoji”. Of course that a definition for something so dynamic and easily changeable as this topic may not be an easy task, but I would describe the “kaomoji” as: “a graphic symbol used in informal texts messages to transmit emotions, feelings or attitudes using letters, ideograms or other simple symbols, mainly through electronic gadgets (like a computer or a cell phone). Unlike the horizontally oriented western-style symbols, the ‘kaomoji’ are usually vertically oriented”. The word usually accepted as the English translation for “kaomoji” is “emoticon” (or sometimes “smiley”), but they will not be used in this work because the nuance in each of these two English words and even the structure of the western symbols themselves differ from those Japanese ones, so from now on only the word “kaomoji” will be used. Another difference between them is the fact that the Japanese “kaomoji” are more numerous in shape, number and meaning than the occidental “emoticons”, maybe because the alphabet letters are 1 byte each, while the Japanese symbols are said to be 2 bytes, which would permit symbols that do not exist in Occident.
　 Just to give a few examples of the Japanese “kaomoji”:
　 (＾∇＾) (ヾ(´･ω･｀) (T_T) (。・_・。)ノ （￣～￣;）
　 (･_･?) (◎^ω^◎) （＾▼≦ゞ） f^_^ (*・_・)ノ⌒* (;´ρ`)

Note: the Japanese word “kaomoji” will be used here both to indicate the singular and the plural form, without adding an “s” at the end to make the expected plural form.

2. The advent of the “kaomoji”
　 The reason for the popularity of the “kaomoji” can be easily guessed without a deep study: to transmit informations that simple alphabet letters or even Japanese ideograms cannot transmit, because of the natural limitation of the written texts. In other words, in a face-to-face conversation, one can use body language, smiles or any other facial expressions that help to complement those spoken informations. But with the development of the Internet and gadgets related to it, the online chat became almost as fast as the traditional face-to-face chat could be and little by little the virtual communication gained popularity to the detriment of the traditional communication. Several on-line chat-rooms and Internet forums are the proof that the electronic communication has achieved this point.
　 However, the weak point of this kind of communication is the impossibility to apply emphasis to some words or expressions using the sound (like a different intonation, voice, volume or pause), the own face (like a smile, an eye blink or an eye movement) or the whole body in general (like the hands or the shoulders). Therefore, the advent of strategies that could, in certain sense, cover these failures is quite expectable and even necessary.
　 If we think about our usual written texts, there is also a very similar but quite old technique: the punctuation marks used in the occidental languages and even in some oriental languages too. They also have absolutely the same usage: to apply in a graphic symbol emotions the author felt while writing that text and transmit the written contents to others (even to the posterity) in the most precisely way as possible. But is necessary to say that these now necessary items of written language, known as punctuation marks, were widely incorporated only a few centuries ago. For example, the exclamation mark (!) is believed to come from the Latin word “io”, an expression of joy. The letter “i” was written above the letter “o”, making a kind of abbreviation, and later originated the exclamation mark as it is now. In the same way, the question mark (?) is said to come from the Latin word “questio” (meaning “question”) that was abbreviated by its first “q” written above its last letter “o”, a corruption that evolved to the present question mark. All this happened probably in the end of the Middle Ages or a bit later.
　 In a similar way, as the punctuation marks, we can say that the “kaomoji” (and all the other similar symbols) were created as a consequence of the development of the modern communication. Mutatis mutandis, the “kaomoji” is a modern update of the written language, as the punctuation marks were some centuries ago. Nevertheless, it is important to say that in this comparison the only factor used to compare them was the necessity to improve the precision in the communication and it is not the aim of this work to discuss the impact of this kind of symbols in the orthography or even in the grammar orthodoxy.

3. The modern communication
　 It is of common knowledge that in recent years the Internet and other technologies have facilitated the communication to the extreme that the face-to-face meeting is not anymore a condition to information exchanges. (The expression “information exchange” was used here because this kind of virtual communication cannot be called “social relation”, in the traditional meaning of it). And as we have seen, the “kaomoji” has been probably developed through the recent years to facilitate and even to simplify this same written communication. However it may also be a good indicator of a well-known social problem: the problem in the human communication itself. It may sound a strange contradiction the fact that a development in the communication is actually a consequence of a problem in this very communication. But to explain it in other words, with the development of the “virtual communication”, the real “human communication” became more and more rare, reduced to a mere unfriendly and cold “information exchange” through virtual ways, that could barely satisfy the natural tendency of human beings to the socialization. Therefore, this “dehumanization” of the modern communication probably provoked the necessity of “rehumanize” it in some way. Instruments like the “kaomoji” may have been used to make the “virtual communications” as “human” as the face-to-face one, to make it as “real” as the real one. That is the reason why the “kaomoji” was used here as a representative symbol of the admirable tentative ?maybe unconscious one? to resuscitate the genuine human communication.

4. Communication: the Japanese case
　 In my first year of student life here in Japan, I was quite amazed by the quantity of students using cell phones. At least in my country ?and I am sure that there are many others too? the “cell phone culture” has not yet achieved the point Japan is passing by now, a situation where even young children have their own phone or where friends exchange e-mails using their cell phones during the class, even being in the same classroom or in the next desk.
　 This kind of behavior can have a lot of serious social impacts. For example, in my personal opinion, this lack of “real communication” is one of the causes of the high frequency of the so-called “hikikomori” (引きこもり) or even the “suicide” (自殺) cases in Japan. It is not strange or rare the fact that people have problems in their own professional, familiar or social lives, but the strange and even rare is that these people do not have anyone to help them to solve these problems. Without anyone (even their own family) to help them, these people decide to withdraw from any kind of social encounter, by staying locked in their own room (“hikikomori”), and just fleeing from their problems, instead of facing them as would be expectable. Maybe these people never had the opportunity to have a “real communication”, a “human communication” to show them how precious is it. Maybe all their lives were full of “virtual communication”, but lacked the “human communication”. Otherwise, asking for advise and help would be a more common attitude in response to their problems.

5. Conclusion
　 As the socialization is a natural characteristic of all the human beings, all the movements that go against it are surely origins of other social problems. And the problem of human communication is obviously included here.
　 The “kaomoji” example was explained here only as an example of the tentative ?maybe unconsciously, but also genuine? of young people to “humanize” their communication, that recently have been less and less warm and “human”. Although the problem of lack of communication can be surely considered one of the biggest social problems of the modernity, it is also good to see how people react ?maybe unconsciously again? to reject the bad effects of their epoch, maybe without knowing the best solution or even the causes of the problem. It is discussable whether simple solutions as “kaomoji” are really solutions to the problem, but the simple search for a solution is, in some way, part of the solution.
　 We, the young people, are said to be the hope and future of the society. I hope that we are guiding it to the right direction! (*・_・)ウーン・・・