Yesterday one of my senior students pointed out something rather enlightening that I'd never noticed before -- we were talking about the cinematic technique used in anime, and about how anime, especially Shojo Anime, focuses on the eyes to transmit emotions to the audience. Anyway, this student points out that in her observation, Japanese culture tends to look at the eyes for emotion whereas Western culture looks at the mouth. I looked at her in a perplexed way, and she pointed out the differences between Western and Japanese emoticons -- Western emoticons often alter the mouth whereas Japanese emoticons tend to change the eyes. Holy cow, she's right!!

Western emoticons: :-) :-D :-S :-( >:-( :-O :-/ :-P etc.

Japanese emoticons: (^_^) (O_o) (x_X) (の_の) (「_「) (T_T) (>_>) (>_<) (V_V) (@_@) etc.

...obviously there are exceptions, but generally speaking I think it's a fair observation.