What do you see when you look at the Batman logo? To most people, it’s clearly a black bat, spreading its wings against a yellow background. But others interpret the design a little differently. To them, it’s a set of yellow teeth and tonsils staring back from the inky darkness of a gaping mouth.

Surprisingly, what works with bats apparently can work with sakura, too, as one Japanese Twitter says that instead of a single cherry blossom, the etching on this manhole cover looks like a cluster of five cute surprises.

Twitter user Xion lists two of his hobbies as illustration and design. One of the critical skills in drawing is being able to break the subject down into the fundamental shapes that form its structure. For example, instead of seeing the human body as a single unit, an artist can envision it as a connected group of ellipses.

If most of us were walking down the street and came across this manhole with a decorative cherry blossom design, we could probably mentally separate the five petals pretty easily, and see that they’re sort of like rounded triangles with a semi-circle clipped from the tip. Xion, though, went a bit farther, noting how the different parts of the pistil and stamen were represented.

Then he took those parts and rearranged them into something else entirely…and adorably.

Well-loved as the cherry blossoms are in Japan, online commenters don’t seem to be disappointed with this substitution.

“Oh wow, totally! I never noticed that before.”
“Cute! But now I can’t step on them anymore.”
“It’s not a manhole, it’s a wan-hole [wan being the sound of a dog barking in Japanese].”
“Please let me take one of them home.”

For at least one commenter, this was such an epiphany that he says now he can’t see the etching any other way. Still, that’s probably not such a bad tradeoff. Sure, a cool bat is always preferable to some rotten yellow teeth, but if you’re choosing between beautiful cherry blossoms and cute little doggies, you really can’t go wrong either way.

Source: Twitter/Xion