asian persuasion.

"Users from East Asia popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without turning one's head to the left.

These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*), where the asterisks indicate the eyes, the central character, usually an underscore, the mouth, and the parentheses, the outline of the face. A large number of different characters can be used to replace the eyes, which usually is where the emoticon derives its emotive aspect (contrasting the Western emoticons' emoting through the mouth). The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^^. Characters like hyphens or periods can replace the underscore; the period is often used for a smaller, "cuter" mouth or to represent a nose, e.g. (^.^). Alternatively, the mouth/nose can be left out entirely, e.g. (^^). The parentheses also can often be replaced with braces, e.g. {^_^}."

- from Wikipedia's article on emoticons, accessed Oct 1 2007.

it's funny because LibraryThing users who have ostensibly seen my picture on the blog often greet me with a particular emoticon.

and somewhere in the back of my mind, i thought, "that's a japanese eye-smile, isn't it?"

and omfg, i was totally right! = {^_^}