"No emoji found" in Google Japanese Input I am using Google Japanese Input keyboard, and I often want to post a rare emoji such as  or .

The search bar looks like the perfect place to search for an emoji, but unfortunately it fails every time:


It fails even on the simplest requests, such as "smile" or "sad".
It does not work in Japanese either:



I have changed phones, and changed OS (Nexus default, CyanogenMod, LineageOS, Samsung default) many times: The problem has always been present. So I guess it is not a bug, but rather a problem of me not using it correctly.

How to use that feature correctly?
I found the answer 10 minutes after posting the question, that's silly.

The trick is, you must search in hiragana. Even if your locale is English (like in my case).

For instance, search for ねこ instead of cat or 猫:



Most users type the hiragana before getting the kanji anyway, so it kind of makes sense if you think about it afterwards.