This reminds me of a newspaper article that I read almost 10 years ago. A group of foreigners in Hirosaki got pretty pissed when they saw manhole covers that were mistakenly designed, which made the city's symbol look like a Nazi's symbol.

I'm surprised they noticed. The Hirosaki symbol looks enough like a swastika on its own, and you see it everywhere. I don't like when people get mad over symbols like that. When did a swastika or a confederate flag kill anyone on its own. For that matter, the Japanese killed something like 20 million Chinese people in WW2... shouldn't their flag by regarded in the same way as the German flag of the time?

No idea why she was looking at the floor and not around her but mum noticed this really quickly and started snapping away whilst her and dad were going round Japan...glad to know it`s not just her that has noticed this fascinating aspect of Japanese street design!