I think more specifically, East Asian languages are based on symbolic characters already, so using emoji is kind of like using a bunch of new characters, instea

I think more specifically, East Asian languages are based on symbolic characters already, so using emoji is kind of like using a bunch of new characters, instead of being a completely unfamiliar concept. As someone else mentioned, the two layer input systems used by these languages also make inserting an emoji pretty much the same as typing any other word.