A video about a woman who was left baffled by an optical illusion in the Japanese capital of Tokyo has gone viral on TikTok.
The clip was shared by @niamhhogg7 and has garnered a million views since it was posted on May 29.
The woman says in the video: “Someone needs to explain this optical illusion to me because I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“Look at this building here,” the woman says, referring to the Tokyo Skytree tower. “This is directly in front of me, right?”
“It’s right in front of us,” another voice says off-camera as the woman walks away from the camera and stands against the backdrop of the tower.
The woman then walks down the street as the camera follows behind her. During the walk, the camera briefly shows a view of the tower peeking above buildings yet fading away behind them.
The woman then stops at a street crossing as the camera shows the tower appearing to be directly behind another building that’s facing the camera.
“Somehow, you get here, and it’s in front of us,” the voice off-camera says, noting that the tower was previously “directly behind the buildings down there.”
“But now it’s there. Is there two of them?” the woman asks as the clip ends.
A caption shared with the post says: “Is this a glitch in the matrix or something? Can someone explain to me how this works!”
The optical illusion in the viral clip is a result of the parallax effect. The phenomenon sees an “apparent shift in position of a relatively nearby object against more distant ones when viewed from different vantage points,” explains the NASA website.
“Hold out your thumb at arm’s length, close one of your eyes, and examine the relative position of your thumb against other distant (background) objects, such as a window, wall, or tree,” the NASA website says.
“Now look at your thumb with your other eye. What do you notice? Move your thumb closer to your face and repeat the experiment. What was different this time? This is a demonstration of the parallax effect,” the website explains.
A November 2013 study in RadioGraphics notes that visual illusions are “distortions, alterations, or alternatives in the appearance of reality that result primarily from the sensory and perceptual processing mechanisms of the human visual system.”
Illusions of image formation, such as the parallax effect, result from “the way images are generated,” the study explained.
The study explained that an illusion of perception, such as ambiguous figures and distortion, occurs in the “higher-order” brain structures, which are responsible for “coalescing sensory input into a mental image interpreted by the mind.”
It’s no surprise that the Tokyo Skytree stands out wherever the woman in the TikTok video goes on the street, as it is the tallest structure in Japan, soaring at 2,080 feet high.
The viral post comes as Japan was reported to have welcomed over 3.9 million visitors in April, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization, marking a year-on-year record.
Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment via TikTok. This video has not been independently verified.
A stock image of buildings along a street in Tokyo, Japan, against the backdrop of the Tokyo Skytree in the distance.
A stock image of buildings along a street in Tokyo, Japan, against the backdrop of the Tokyo Skytree in the distance.
iStock / Getty Images Plus
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