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[Tsu (ツ) kana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsu_\(kana\)) is sometimes used
on the internet as a smiling face, such as in the emoticon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I'm
wondering if Japanese people notice it or is just another character for them?

The reason I'm asking is that my native language is Arabic, and it has the
[letter Ta' (ت)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taw#Arabic_t.C4.81.CA.BC) that
some people think looks like a wide grinning face, but I'm simply unable to
see it. It's just a letter to me. Do Japanese people see ツ the same way?
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katakana kana internet-slang
Do Japanese people see ツ as a smiling face?
I read your question "Do Japanese people see [tsu] as a smiling face" and read
over the question several times before I got it. And I'm not a native Japanese
reader (or speaker).

Just like your ت (which sort of looks like a smiling face to me) and the
German ü (to Japanese eyes, say), the Japanese ツ doesn't look like a smiling
face to any eye who has become used to reading it as a letter.

So I think if you ask a Japanese native reader whether ツ looks like a smiling
face, I would say the answer will invariably be そう言われてみれば、確かに… "Now that you
say so...". In other words "No!"
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2015-04-17T16:53:53.713
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I never see it used this way in Japanese emoticons, and I just went ahead and
checked every single entry for かおもじ in Google's Windows Japanese IME, and
there wasn't a single example of one using it as a face.
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2015-03-20T05:05:18.897
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I know one guy at work using it a lot. Can be either ツ （ツ） (ツ)/ etc.  
I joked creating a cyclope version with the （ソ）.

As you can see from the other answers, it is not common knowledge and I then
think it is mostly used by people close to the IT world, not the most famous
trend around here.
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2015-03-20T08:55:18.903
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Well I think only kids and artists see it as a smiling face. Often artists and
children would draw characters using that character
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2017-07-17T15:18:57.620
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I know this is an old post, and I'm not Japanese, but I did some research and
I found out this:

Japanese don't look at the mouth to notice emotions, rather the eyes. Since
the "eyes" here are literally just stripes, I doubt they'd see anything.

Example of Japanese emoji: (^_^)

Example of English emoji: :)

These represent the same feeling (happy), but there's a stark difference, as
you can see.

This is because the Japanese learn to read eyes more than mouths, because in
Japanese culture, people tend to suppress emotion, but eyes are harder to
control than mouths, so they're often easier to read in that case.

"when Yuki entered graduate school and began communicating with American
scholars over e-mail, he was often confused by their use of emoticons such as
smiley faces :) and sad faces, or :(." -
<https://www.livescience.com/1498-americans-japanese-read-faces-
differently.html> (Thats a source, btw)
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Considering

の の

も

へ

Is a popular face to make for Japanese Children, I'd say yes, I'm sure
Japanese people notice that it looks like a smiley face.

Edit: I suppose it could depend on the mindset. Even though no single English
letter looks like anything, when I was a child, I would always think ""C"
looks like a smile" or ""E" Looks like teeth."

Perhaps some kids/people think that at some point (especially since the
¯_(ツ)_/¯ is popular in Japan), but maybe some don't.
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