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I am not sure it's worth reading into what there are and aren't emojis of. There is an emoji of the Tokyo Tower, but not one of the Eiffel Tower. It isn't bec

I am not sure it's worth reading into what there are and aren't emojis of. There is an emoji of the Tokyo Tower, but not one of the Eiffel Tower. It isn't because the Tokyo Tower is more important than the Eiffel Tower, it's because the set is based on a random collection of pictures that Japanese cell phone carriers created over the years. (e = picture, moji = letter, that's where the word came from. A "false friend" with emoticon, interestingly.) When creating this collection, they missed a lot of stuff. It was never intended to be a complete set of all symbols that a human might need. Some guy at some phone company just made them. The attempts to add a handful of new characters with each new Unicode version don't improve much. People seem to be using the eggplant emoji as a standin for a penis. It gets the message across, apparently.

james_s_tayler 7y ago
There is an emoji for love hotels.
- gowld 7y ago
  haha, https://www.dictionary.com/e/emoji/love-hotel/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/emoji/love-hotel/ > The love hotel or heart hospital emoji depicts a building with both a pink heart and on some platforms the letter H emblazoned on the front. It is mostly used in reference to hospitals and health as well as to vacation resorts. https://emojipedia.org/love-hotel/ https://emojipedia.org/love-hotel/ > A love hotel is a hotel that can be hired by the hour instead of as accommodation for the evening. Sometimes mistaken for a get well soon emoji due to the similarity in appearance to the hospital.
- ccktlmazeltov 7y ago
  looks like I can't display it here
throwaway49872 7y ago
> It isn't because the Tokyo Tower is more important than the Eiffel Tower That's debatable.
- samatman 7y ago
  It is not, in fact, debatable, that this is not the reason why one is an emoji and the other is not.
  - RyJones 7y ago
    I was stung when the exhibit in the Tokyo Tower of other famous towers of the world didn’t have the Space Needle, but had other, shorter buildings for scale.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> (e = picture, moji = letter, that's where the word came from. A "false friend" with emoticon, interestingly.) I'll observe tangentially that the Chinese term is 表情, "emotion indicator".
benibela 7y ago
There is also a map of Japan emoji, but no other country has one
- labster 7y ago
  Maps could always be implemented as a combining country code, as flags are. I’m still sad Shibuya 109 was removed from Unicode, that place is iconic.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    It is iconic but a little unfair to the rest of the world to exclude their iconic places from Unicode. If Tokyu (it's a pun; 109 => 10 = too, 9 = kyuu) gets an emoji, why not McDonalds, Burger King, Bank of America, Google, etc. It would be nice if we could scale Unicode and let everyone have their own emoji, but we can't scale it. Think about the volumes of text that have been written over whether the gun emoji should be a handgun or a squirt gun. Now repeat that for every notable place and company in the world... and it's just not something humanity can achieve. What we need is extensible unicode. Some way of marking up documents to say "here is the URL that defines these characters", and then people could install the "New York City emoji pack" and be able to use the Empire State Building or Grand Central Terminal in addition to Shibuya 109 or Tokyo Tower. I guess HTML is that markup language, and it turns out that you can put whatever images in the text you want. It was probably a mistake to standardize Softbank's picture SMS crap, but here we are.
    - labster 7y ago
      Yes, if we try to scale Unicode to everyone in the world we do end up a little like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. I'd say the closest thing we have to a logo for everyone is in the Private Use Area plane, https://fontawesome.io https://fontawesome.io
tasogare 7y ago
That reasoning would be valid if Unicode wasn’t adding new emoji from scratch every years. They do yet they don’t add few anatomical parts that are every important concern in most human lives.

james_s_tayler 7y ago

There is an emoji for love hotels.

gowld 7y ago
haha, https://www.dictionary.com/e/emoji/love-hotel/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/emoji/love-hotel/ > The love hotel or heart hospital emoji depicts a building with both a pink heart and on some platforms the letter H emblazoned on the front. It is mostly used in reference to hospitals and health as well as to vacation resorts. https://emojipedia.org/love-hotel/ https://emojipedia.org/love-hotel/ > A love hotel is a hotel that can be hired by the hour instead of as accommodation for the evening. Sometimes mistaken for a get well soon emoji due to the similarity in appearance to the hospital.
ccktlmazeltov 7y ago
looks like I can't display it here

throwaway49872 7y ago

> It isn't because the Tokyo Tower is more important than the Eiffel Tower That's debatable.

samatman 7y ago
It is not, in fact, debatable, that this is not the reason why one is an emoji and the other is not.
- RyJones 7y ago
  I was stung when the exhibit in the Tokyo Tower of other famous towers of the world didn’t have the Space Needle, but had other, shorter buildings for scale.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> (e = picture, moji = letter, that's where the word came from. A "false friend" with emoticon, interestingly.) I'll observe tangentially that the Chinese term is 表情, "emotion indicator".

benibela 7y ago

There is also a map of Japan emoji, but no other country has one

labster 7y ago
Maps could always be implemented as a combining country code, as flags are. I’m still sad Shibuya 109 was removed from Unicode, that place is iconic.
- jrockway 7y ago
  It is iconic but a little unfair to the rest of the world to exclude their iconic places from Unicode. If Tokyu (it's a pun; 109 => 10 = too, 9 = kyuu) gets an emoji, why not McDonalds, Burger King, Bank of America, Google, etc. It would be nice if we could scale Unicode and let everyone have their own emoji, but we can't scale it. Think about the volumes of text that have been written over whether the gun emoji should be a handgun or a squirt gun. Now repeat that for every notable place and company in the world... and it's just not something humanity can achieve. What we need is extensible unicode. Some way of marking up documents to say "here is the URL that defines these characters", and then people could install the "New York City emoji pack" and be able to use the Empire State Building or Grand Central Terminal in addition to Shibuya 109 or Tokyo Tower. I guess HTML is that markup language, and it turns out that you can put whatever images in the text you want. It was probably a mistake to standardize Softbank's picture SMS crap, but here we are.
  - labster 7y ago
    Yes, if we try to scale Unicode to everyone in the world we do end up a little like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. I'd say the closest thing we have to a logo for everyone is in the Private Use Area plane, https://fontawesome.io https://fontawesome.io

tasogare 7y ago

That reasoning would be valid if Unicode wasn’t adding new emoji from scratch every years. They do yet they don’t add few anatomical parts that are every important concern in most human lives.