The view from here: Griffith in 2013 (no. 1.5 in a series)

So just when you though it was safe...

I don't think anyone was surprised by last Thursday's leadership shenanigans. I think many of us were surprised about the way they unfolded however. That's the disappointing aspect I think. 

In the washup, this has not ended leadership speculation. In my political lifetime/timeline, I have watched and witnessed Fraser/Howard/Peacock, Howard/Peacock, Hayden/Hawke, Hawke/Keating, Howard/Costello and now Rudd/Gillard. Perhaps it is a function of the egos at this level, what it becomes is a frustrating turn of events for voters of both sides. 

Anyway, with Kevin Rudd's 'declaration' that he will not, under any circumstances, contest the Labor leadership again, the focus of this series of posts as planned last week will change. I will take a few more days to review what I had ready to go this evening. 

I still think it is worth looking at the history of the seat and at Kevin Rudd's figures, as much as one can retrieve them from the data base. What I am now interested in though is the state electorate overlays. Rumours are already around that he might well be 'drafted' for the state premiership, to take on Campbell Newman and the LNP.

The seat of Griffith also covers prime inner city state seats including Greenslopes, Bulimba, Chatsworth, South Brisbane and Yeerongpilly. From the figures, we might be able to glean which of these seats might be his strongest bet, should he go that way. I shall rejig the posts to account for these changed circumstances. I will also be keeping my ears out in the local places to gauge the feeling of Mr Rudd's constituents. I'm expecting to see many more giveaway bikes and local media pieces.

The bigger lesson one draws from this however, is the sadness one feels as an observer and commentator and, as a voter, a participant in the political process. On one level this past week, what we witnessed was a sad corruption of process. The leadership struggles come across as nothing more than personal aggrandisement and selfish pursuit of power. This is not what our politics should be about. 

I couldn't help but fear this week that Hobbes might have been right...but the Kantian struggle continues regardless. Anon.

The view from here : Griffith in 2013 (no. 1 in a series)

The confidence of Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister

One of the aims of this blog when I started it just over a year ago (was I supposed to light a candle on its first birthday last month?) was to muse on politics as I follow it here and in Japan, with a nod to the social contract from time to time. It also allows me to explore ideas and put forward some observations outside the usual strictures of the formal academic sphere. (I have to say, the hits on the blog suggest a far higher 'viewing' rate than the formal citations system by which our careers can be judged.) 

One of my early posts was about my local member, Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister for a time and now a peripatetic backbencher (though I don't mean that in the Aristotelian sense of the word). Things are getting sufficiently interesting in Australian politics to take another moment to look at what is going on in this electorate. Over the next couple of posts I will offer some on-the-ground observations and some background on the seat including its history and a little bit of psephological insight. The talk is on again about a challenge to the Labor Party leadership and so therefore, the prime ministership, until the election, currently due on 14 September.

Let the games begin

Mr Rudd currently holds his seat by 8.5%. That has fluctuated over time, but should be considered reasonably safe. The enigma that is the politics involving Kevin Rudd is that he enjoys high popularity across a number of different opinion polls when the public is asked, reasonable popularity in his electorate but loathed by a large number of Cabinet colleagues, the people who will return him to the prime ministership. I am intrigued by the conundrum inherent in these figures. 

So what (as my supervisor would say)? There are several questions I seek to ask around this conundrum over the next few months, while reporting from the Griffith heartland as much as possible. 

The Liberal National Party (as it is known here in Queensland now) have put forward a candidate, Dr Bill Glasson, who brings to the position a reasonable media profile as a former president of the AMA, the doctors' union. He and his supporters are already on the hustings around the electorate, spending many a Saturday morning on street corners, waving placards. Dr Glasson received some unanticipated publicity on Friday last too when it was revealed his campaign was subject to some 'assistance' by way of a University exercise whereby students were asked to devise a winning campaign for him. 

When it comes to campaigning on the ground, Mr Rudd covers the local media very well. The local throwaway suburban paper the Southeast Advertiser carries his regular 'Rudd Report' and generally any photos or news of his engagement in the electorate, whether it is giving away his 'Rudd bikes' or handing out 'language awards'. One could be cynical about the purpose behind these activities, but I'm going to withhold cynicism from these next few posts. 

Kevin Rudd launching Troy Bramston's book,
16 March 2013.

I observed the former prime minister quite closely yesterday at a book launch in a local bookshop. I don't pretend to know Kevin Rudd although he has been my local member since 1998. To understand where I come from when it comes to Mr Rudd, I suggest you read the earlier post. Nonetheless, I have watched politics from the front row for a while now. And although I was sitting in the back row yesterday, I saw a man with unrequited ambition, a sense that the prime ministership was still his to be had. There was also a slightly humbled man, that look one has when one has been 'hit for six', and I reflected on how public that had been for him. (My personal career humiliations and disappointments have been much less public, but they hurt nonetheless, and they leave deep impressions, no matter how hard one tries to disguise them.) What drives someone to continue to want to do this? I got to thinking a little about the contest ahead and the vote I will cast in a few months. It is more than a mere 'place a number' in the box...

I am not the sort of political scientist who makes predictions and these posts will not present any. I will be watching this contest closely because it is my federal electorate and much rests on its outcome. Who wins or loses the two imminent contests--that for leader of the Labor Party (and with it the prime ministership) and that for Griffith--will indeed tell us as much about us as it will about the candidates. It will convey to us our modern social contract and whether or not the 'first among equals' of the Westminster traditions has been usurped by a shallow 'survivor'-type reality politics, game of drones.

In the next post, I will review the history of the electorate, past members and contests. There will be some meandering among the musings, but bear with me. I think we are in for a most interesting time here in Griffith. 

A return to where it began: an anomaly structure

On the way to Philosophers' Road, in Kyoto

Some reflections of the Japanese year ahead

There's been a little bit of loving neglect at this little place. There's been a lot of work going on in other places while my ideas on Japan's politics and the year ahead have chugged away in the background. Classes have started again too so I really do want to start putting down some thoughts again, here where it all began. 

I thought I might begin with reviewing some of the notes I made on the Japanese election back in December, having arrived just a couple of days afterwards.

I arrived on Wednesday and had a good conversation with our taxi driver on the way home. He was disappointed with the result overall and surprised by the extent of the DPJ loss, He was also very cynical about of role of religious parties in this case the Komei and held quite a strong view that there is no place for mixing religion and politics. 

The driver opened up about Makiko TANAKA, daughter of a former prime minister (Kakuei TANAKA), and who lost her seat in this election. If you 'forget your supporters, they'll forget you' he said. She just became aloof from the people who supported her. 

He was also concerned about the downturn in the economy. 'Tobikomi' incidents have increased (people throwing themselves in front of trains) and he spoke at some length about the depressed state of the economy: people aren't using taxis anywhere near the extent they have previously especially at this time of year with end of year parties and the like; people are just going to the first round of drinks and not going on for further rounds, something as a student I recall, the 'hashigo' ...what we might call a bit of a pub crawl. It was a good long chat and 3500 yen later we parted our ways. 

LDP seeks to reclaim the party rooms in the parliament

Before the week was out, there was some strong resonance with the actions of the Liberal Democrats and Queensland's Newman Government when the leaders of the LDP made quite a fuss about regaining 'their' rooms in Parliament House...right down to analysts commentating on the interior of the building, showing the 'real estate' and how it was configured across the parties and with the new seats. Remember the LNP Government in Queensland palming the opposition to rooms in another building? That sort of thing. 

Some interesting signals were being sent in this post-election week as satisfaction that the Nikkei index was back into the 10000 mark was attributed to Abe's reelection and yet, the 'feeling on the ground' was that the average person was feeling less than optimistic. A neologism was coined: 'Abenomics'

Thee was a minor tremor Thursday morning to remind me where I am because a visit to Tokyo is never complete without an small earthquake

But perhaps it was just a sign of the nepotism as PM Abe offers a significant position in his office to the nephew of a former business leader, Keidanren's Imai san.

Final numbers declared: LDP 294, DPJ 57, Ishin 54, Komei 31, Minna 18, mirai 9, JCP 8, Shamin 2, Taichi 1, Kokumin 1, Non-aligned 5; a big recovery in seats for the LDP. Already there is discussion about the next election, an upper house election due in July 2013. 

A sign I came across in Kyoto.
No, I don't know what it means either but it managed to capture
 a certain 'something' about the zeitgeist. 

In a newspaper poll taken 17-18 Dec, 57% thought the change was good; 51% have some expectation of Abe, though 42% don't. The same poll suggests it wasn't so much a win for the LDP (only 7% support their policies) but 81% were disappointed in the DPJ's policies.

Some letters to the editor in the Asahi Shimbun could be written by Australians: a 22 yo student wrote that of four friends sitting and chatting, two voted and two didn't. One said he voted the way his mother did, the other disappointed that no party opposed the consumption tax (a kind of GST). Noted that social media was the way to speak to young people since they don't read newspapers. Would like to be able to vote via the Internet. Finished saying that rather than say young people aren't interested in politics, perhaps it is politics that isn't making the effort to reach young people?

The AERA newsmagazine special issue this week contains a couple of interesting articles. One in particular looks at the promise of politics of the future with the election of a number of politicians under 40. Journalists and a commentators Keats like to focus on a particular group, previously it's been women candidates. This time however, it is this group. Of 271 candidates, 48 (17.7%) were elected in the single member electorates and 78 (28.8%) were elected in the PR electorate. There's also something interesting about the 'third wave' discussions, particularly with the Ishin no Kai party and what's to come of it. There will be some interesting material to follow up with here. 

Two weeks later, the first week of the new year, there is something of a forced optimism...a new government so great expectations on the one hand but at the same time a sense of frustration that it is Abe Mark II; so while the yen is up and the Nikkei is sitting in the 10,000 area, there are nonetheless doubts about change really happening.

We also seem to be upping the ante over the disputed islets between China and Japan, Abe might force a change in the Constitution to manage this. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail. 

In other news this new year's week, we mark the demise after one month of the Kada/Ozawa party 'Mirai no To', literally translated as the 'Future Party'; instead, they called it the 'Tomorrow Party', I guess there wasn't a future in it after all.

To the next few months

PM Abe has made his initial visit to the United States. The Senkaku/ Daiyou dispute continues to play out. (I think about the paper I presented last year at a conference on this very issue, before it escalated...I must get it published.) There is a new president of the Bank of Japan...someone more compliant to the Abe Government agenda? Let's see.

And this week of course, sees the second anniversary of the Tohoku tsunami/earthquake and radiation fallout. It will be a sombre week for Japan and a test I think for the Abe Government as it feels, I suspect, the great expectations that people will put on this government to finally do something. It was this immobilism which contributed to the DPJ loss; the LDP, as opposition parties are wont to do, made great political mileage out of this. Now, it will be their turn...this week will tell us much about that I think.

Two weeks on: the Asian Century still matters, doesn’t it?

*This post first appeared on OnLine Opinion in November 2012. 

Cultivating longevity

The federal government’s White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century received a good deal of media coverage, perhaps even longer than the average white paper. Reactions fell broadly into two categories: those of the Asian Studies professionals who might appear a little jaded by the recycling of some longstanding ideas but nonetheless welcomed the paper’s promise, as they always do; and the others who saw the White Paper as a mechanism to impose unwanted strictures on their hitherto satisfactory approach to Asian markets.

Among the latter were those who sought to quantify the inevitable hurdles—quoting US CIA tables, for example, of the many more hours it takes to ‘learn’ ideograph-based Asian languages over ‘easier’ European languages. One read of 2200 hours versus 700 hours as if that were to be the primary determinant of successful language learning. It’s not of course. Passion, desire and interest in the language, people and culture make the ‘hours’ almost negligible. When asked to estimate the hours I’ve spent learning, or the number of Chinese characters I know, I have to answer ‘I don’t know’. It is there, I wanted to know, I just did it.

How many hours does it take to learn a musical instrument? Learn to drive a car? You can line up two people who have expended the same number of hours learning a skill and still have different capabilities. I’ve probably spent more hours swimming in my lifetime than our youngest Olympic swimmers, but I’ll never be an Olympic swimmer. The quantification of hours isn’t going to discourage those who have a mindset to achieve.

There was a somewhat surprising reaction too from the business community, resisting the expectation that a certain proportion of board members should, in time, have Asian in-country experience. On that score, resistance is almost useless I expect. More people are gaining experience in Asia and so that proportion should grow naturally.

These sorts of reactions seem petty in comparison with the visionary leap that governments sometimes feel they need to undertake. But government visions have political imperatives, and white papers can fulfil that function. Is it a cynical reprise to suggest that a visionary leap might be underpinned by political imperatives? Probably not, however…

The thought came to me as the media bandwagon moved on to cover two pivotal international events: the US presidential election and the change of leadership in China. As an international relations specialist, understanding Australia’s relations with China and the US and China’s relations with the US, is part of what I do. What struck me was the way the media shifted to discussing the relationships, or the ‘transition’ as the Fairfax press described it. After a week of overly self-conscious angst about ‘how’ we should be a part of Asia, we just got on with dealing with the events as they unfolded.

There is an ambiguity here which periodic white papers are not going to solve. I think the scope and ambition of the white papers overwhelm the general public in the first instance and some of the initial reaction we have seen reflects that. In time, that settles, and our approach to Asia returns to the status quo. Out of the white paper spotlight, we actually have a rather robust degree of ‘Asia-literacy’, people in the public and private sector whose day-to-day engagement is amongst the richest in the world.

On reflection, perhaps the smart way for governments to cultivate longevity in an Asian century is not by drawing attention to it via an anxiously anticipated White Paper. It has, as we have seen, really encouraged the naysayers, the reactionaries who say the mountain is too high to climb. Governments could instead simply normalise the way we approach Asia, the ways in which we engage with the region. It is political, it is cultural, it is strategic, it is educational. It does not happen by quantifying hours or putting up barriers of inconvenience.

It might also be something as simple as recognising that Australia is but one country in a region of diverse societies and cultures which actually resist the simple ‘Asian’ nomenclature. We then might feel more comfortable with engaging with neighbours, rather than masses en bloc.  

Australia in the Asian Century White Paper: a generational reboot

*This post was first published on OnLine Opinion, 30 October 2012

Months in the making, hours in the judgement, but what of its prolonged impact?

The Gillard Government’s much-anticipated white paper on Australia’s engagement with the Asian region was released on Sunday at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. Australia’s diminishing pool of Asia specialists is simultaneously hopeful and sceptical. A few of the old hands around are silently ruminating on white papers past while others eagerly anticipate the promise of a whole-of-government response to a multi-faceted document which sketches out our future in the region to 2025. Instead of starting afresh, we would do well to view this White Paper as a statement which consolidates our past with Asia while stepping up to a more nuanced approach.

Media coverage since its release has focussed on the economic and trade aspects as well as the need to learn some of the languages of the region, notably Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. The languages and the economy have been inextricably linked. It is a common theme in Australia’s engagement with Asia, we tend to see the region as a market place to buy and sell our commodities and our policies follow. If we continue to approach Asia in this way, we will continue to churn out white papers which will promise much but deliver little.

This White Paper does cover more detail than the predominant commentary would suggest. There is a conscious effort to convey the depth and breadth of relationships and building stronger security options in the region. There is a reiteration of the importance of people-to-people contact. Out of the spotlight of white papers, it serves us well to acknowledge that this ‘sudden emergence’ of the Asian century has been, in fact, a century (or more) in the making.

In the immediacy of seeking economic fulfilment, it can be easy to overlook broader historical trends. This white paper announcement coincides with the 40^th anniversary of normalisation of relations with mainland China. The rhetoric then argued for closer, more complex relations. In 1976, Australia and Japan signed a basic treaty of friendship and cooperation which aimed to soften the sharp edges of the predominantly economic relationship. That relationship had gained economic primacy through the 1960s and 1970s on the back of resources trade. In 1989, Professor Ross Garnaut focussed clearly on the economic potential and markets in Northeast Asia, introducing the promise of South Korea to the Australian consciousness in the way China and Japan had been introduced half a generation earlier. Prime Minister Paul Keating during his term made much of an Asian turning point and notwithstanding the scepticism surrounding the sudden conversion of the Francophile, he did energise APEC through a stronger leaders’ forum.

We can go back further in our history when we were less self-conscious about our interaction. The signing of a trade agreement between Japan and Australia in 1957 where wartime enmity was slowly giving way to a strained mateship in a largely pragmatic recognition of where Australia’s future was headed. We can go further back, to the 19^th century, where Japanese intellectuals espoused the value of Australia to the region for the ‘Pacific Century’, yes—the turn of the 20^th century.

The brief history lesson is not to diminish the significance of the latest white paper. Rather, as noted above, it is better to see this white paper as a consolidation of a deep foundation of Asian engagement stretching back over a century, not stepping out anew.

When introducing students to the study of the region I like to offer a couple of anecdotes. The first is that 30 years ago, as an undergraduate, we debated the proposition that ‘Australia is a part of Asia’. Naturally, as a group of Asian studies students, we figured the answer, in the affirmative, was a ‘no-brainer’. But thirty years seems a long time to keep revisiting a debate.

The second anecdote is a little more personal. I tell students that I was one of 300 or so Year 8 students introduced to Japanese language in Queensland in the mid 1970s. There were about ten schools across Queensland at the time doing the same, so roughly 3000 new students to the language started their journey. Using my school as an example, by Year 12 we had a class of six. Of those six only one went on to university to study the language, gain a few qualifications and become reasonably fluent. Once we multiply that across Queensland and the rest of the country, and add to that the fact that Japanese and other Asian languages have become a well-established element of school curricula in the intervening 35 years, we end up with quite a mind-boggling number of potential ‘Asia-literate’ people. Our reality of course is that only the pro-rata equivalent of that 1/300 go on to make a career of it. Imagine if we had capitalised on all the energy and commitment all those years ago.

Still, I always aim to be more hopeful than sceptical. I am passing into ‘old-hand’ status now and I will seek to capitalise on this momentum while I can, as I did in 1989 and as I benefited from in the 1970s. We are now actually more deeply embedded in the Asian region than perhaps even the self-conscious commentary of the past couple of days might realise. Prime Minister Gillard’s passion for education over foreign affairs is self-proclaimed. Perhaps her educational imperatives can override the economic pragmatism of previous Asian endeavours and we can build on the momentum of Asian centuries past to embrace Asian centuries of the future.

Mirror, mirror in the chamber: a week is a long time…

In asking us to respect our political institutions, those within ought to respect them too

*   misogyny: n. hatred of women.

* misanthropy: n. hatred, dislike or distrust of mankind

*   sexist: adj. of an attitude which stereotypes a person according to gender, or sexual preference, rather than judging on individual merits.

*   context: n. the parts of a discourse or writing which precede or follow, and are directly connected with, a given passage or word.

*   adversarial: not what our politics should be…

Each time I sat down to write a post this week, so many other bloggists did the same thing: just faster and better than me. We’ve had an odd week in the political sphere, an awful one actually which does our polity no good. It revolved around those words at the top of this post, I include the simple definitions for your consideration.

The words ‘misogyny’ and ‘sexist’ have been thrown around liberally as one side of politics has sought to out-yell the other. There have been texts which probably shouldn’t have been written, let alone made public. There’s been a prime ministerial speech delivered from the dispatch box in our National Parliament but which has reverberated around the world… There’s just been a whole lot of wha? is going on out there.

One angle I’d like to add to the blogosphere however, that I don’t believe has been covered yet, is the impact this has on those who don’t like politics, those who study it and those who want to understand it but wonder why they should. These are the students I teach, the friends I talk to and the radio audience I engage with from time to time.

I’ve worked in the heart of Australian politics as it is played out in Canberra. It is contradictory, it is many-sided, it is hypocritical, it has been nasty. It also has a lot of people who mostly want to see good things done, who want to see a better society and want to do much good. Because I’ve witnessed the good that politics can be, my despair at the last week or so is greater but so too does my determination to work from my place now in the academy to make it work better.

The question for me is ‘how can we get our politics back on track?’ Why has it derailed so badly? While our Prime Minister’s most sharply delivered line might have directed the Opposition Leader to look in a mirror, I’d propose that our politics is our mirror on this society…and I think that mirror needs a little spray and wipe.

I was entranced by Prime Minister Gillard’s speech this week. As one who analyses speeches and their delivery, and as one who has written them, a political speech can convey so much. A speech can indeed have a significance beyond its intention and it can carry beyond its moment. I think PM Gillard’s speech will do that. There was evident in her every fibre, an anger and frustration that many of us have felt to some degree or another at one time or another. She did not scream, she did not yell. She asserted herself, she was passionate about what she was saying. She garnered the empathy of many because it was heartfelt.

And yet, it was not a speech that should have needed to be made in our 21^st century parliament. I am concerned that what we have seen in the last few weeks is an amplification of a tangled web of anger and sexist behaviour. It permeates our society unfortunately, and I think it is getting worse, or I’m tolerating it less. I listened in despair as some radio talkback callers aired views about the prime minister … why do people ring up the radio to publicly declare on the prime minister’s body shape, why FCS? Kudos to Rebecca Levingston (@reblev on our @612brisbane) the presenter who handled the situation so well, live to air. She had earlier set up a thoughtful dialogue between academic Dr Bronwen Levy and Andrew Bartlett. They talked about the return to civility and politeness in our political discourse. It is so much easier really, to be civil, than to be rude.

All this in the week that Malala Yousafzai, a teenage girl passionate in her belief in education for girls and women and her dreams of becoming a political leader, was shot by hostile members of the Taliban. As I write, she is still on ventilator, fighting for her life. She was front and centre of one of my lectures this week. I showed a short video of Malala talking to camera and speaking to us. Here was a 14 year old who believed passionately in the value of education, who wanted to pursue her education, who spoke highly of the importance of a strong polity and her desire that in order to do good, she must become a great political leader. I hope she does. I wonder what she would have thought if she’d watched our parliamentary example this past week.

It was one of those ‘special’ moments in class I’ve spoken of previously—those unplanned moments of learning for all of us—a thoughtful pause descended on the lecture theatre. I conveyed to students that moments like this challenge us all—can my belief in the transformative power of education sit alongside my preference that our soldiers be withdrawn from these regions? Sometimes, life and circumstance do a scornful and teasing dance upon our textbooks. I am fortunate to teach students prepared to come along for that ride.

Later that night, on my drive home, I tried a little time travel. I tried to imagine a 14-year-old Julia Gillard, 36 years ago giving a speech about her aspirations, her dream of education, her wish to become a leader. Then, I projected myself 100km down the highway and 36 years into the future when a 50-year-old Malala might be standing at the dispatch box of her parliament. I hope her speeches won't be about staring down sexist and unpleasant behaviour. I hope for her and the future, that anger which pervades now will have subsided, nay, diminished. I hope her speeches will not need to be analysed and parsed in a context of misogyny and adversarial politics.

We all need to look in that mirror held up in Canberra this week and ask ourselves, really, what do we have to be so angry about? Our polity is our social contract, and it takes all of us to make it work.

And my thanks too to Rebecca Levingston and Tony Johnston on @ABCGoldCoast for inviting me along to try and make sense of the week. We’ll just keep holding up that mirror.

All definitions at the top of this post are taken from the Macquarie Dictionary, just because.

What's with the emoticons?

Today's emoticon: a psephy aside

Perhaps one of the most common queries I get about my twitter presence relates to the daily emoticon I send out each morning, well, Monday to Friday. I thought I'd take a short post to explain. 

It must be said, twitter has really loosened up how a buttoned-up, stiff-upper-lip academic type should communicate with the world. Refining a comment to 140chars is a challenge for one whose professional inclination is to take a 500 word answer and turn it into a 97,000 word thesis. But it has taught me to be more thoughtful with words and with the craft of writing. The blogs which are emerging out of this experience are also exciting ways to engage and convey ideas which might otherwise be confined to the academy. And from twitter, it's been straight to local radio commentary as well. It's been quite a year. 

Notwithstanding the sense of freedom, one aspect I didn't expect to embrace, indeed aimed to avoid for 'professional' reasons, was that damned ubiquitous emoticon on tweets, the :) or ;( or some variations I had noticed: an occasional nose job :-) or something like ;-P. To someone new to twitter, and determined to 'keep it serious', I was not going to engage in the emoticon thing >%< ...well, 'Ha!' as one of my favourite tweeps @nancycato1 might say. 

I soon learned that no matter how carefully one thought one had crafted one's 140chars, the possibility for misunderstanding or miscommunication, without the usual visual signals, was quite high. So I started to mimic others, tried a few variations :~}* and also noticed that there were some pretty amazing variations on the theme in my Japanese timelines. Emoticons like: 

confused: (◎_◎;) (´･_･`); 

the dancers: 〜(￣△￣〜) (〜￣△￣)〜 ┗(｀ー´)┓┏(｀ー´)┛

drinkers: (。・・)_且 ~~~且_(ﾟ◇ﾟ；)ノﾞ; 

friends: ヽ(＾▽＾)人(＾▽＾)人(＾▽＾)ﾉ...

and so on and so forth.

One day, I just started adding these variations into my tweets when I felt an expression might help. A number of simple ones are included on the Japanese keypad of my iFruit devices (quite distinct from the 'emoji' keyboard most people have discovered). But there are also several websites available where many examples have been collated. One I like to use is http://www.japaneseemoticons.net. I liked the way the Japanese emoticons were horizontal rather than the vertical, English counterparts. They’re easier to read, rather than turn my head on its side to get your intention.

One day a few kindly tweeps remarked on some of the more adventurous ones and so ‘Today’s emoticon’ was born. It goes out on the timeline early in the morning and directly to those initiated the idea @debbie_green19 @AgnessMack and @nancycato1, and more recently @janecat60 has joined the conversation which can bounce around the twittersphere in that very twittery way.

Sometimes I’ll hint at the meaning for the day, but most times, I just set them free. The emoticons in the end, can mean really what you want them to mean, as a white rabbit might have once said. I am getting more adventurous with my variations but never stray too far from the Japanese usage.

And so, that’s all there is to the tale. It’s just a little cross-cultural twittering I partake in as I share the twittersphere with good people. Enjoy!

ヾ(＠⌒ー⌒＠)ノ