This 13 January marked yet another Coming-of-Age Day in Japan. Every year on the second Monday of January, young adults who have turned 20 in the previous year congregate in city halls and community centers across the land.

These ceremonies honor the passage into adulthood and for such a once in a lifetime event, it’s not uncommon to see young women dress to the nines with an elegant kimono and elaborate hairstyle. Nails are an important feature too, but one young woman decided to accompany the event with some once-in-a-lifetime nails. In fact the image above is only about 45% of them.

Get ready to see the full picture, but beware! It’s kind of like staring into an Escher painting.

The following photo was posted on Twitter with the caption: “Coming-of-age nails, the My Melody on my left thumb is the size of an iPhone (°_°)” It’s hard to scale from the photo but I’d say that My Melody is more the size of an iPod Classic than an iPhone.

The photo has gotten over 20,000 retweets in a few days and has drawn a range of emotions from witnesses. Some found them hilarious saying, “Hmm, lol that’s more like an art installation. Lol”

Many others celebrated them with comments of “a great image of coming-of-age nails” and “those are my favorite nails!” Meanwhile, others were not so impressed, lamenting, “yikes… yikes” and “those are in no way cute.”

Love them or hate them, one commenter hit the nail on the head writing, “I can’t tell where the fingers begin.” Indeed, it took me a good deal of staring cross-eyed to figure out how all these Kitties and Melodies attached to her hands. And I’m still in the process of figuring out how she walks around with all that gear. I figure either like a surgeon who just scrubbed up or a spooky ghost.

Source: Twitter via Byokan Sunday (Japanese)