Apparently any place looks better if you just say it’s Japan.

That’s according to a TikTok trend, dubbed the “Japan effect.” First reported in Casey Lewis’s youth trends newsletter After School, the trend has users making slideshows of two images. For all intents and purposes they are the same, except one is labelled with the original location and the second is labelled Tokyo, Japan.

The idea being that the “Japan effect” is so strong, just the location tag can filter how we perceive an ordinary street or an average American neighborhood. Scrolling through the comments, those watching these TikTok videos genuinely believe the second image looks better than the first.

“I’ve seen so many of these videos and it’s made me realise my own huge Japan bias,” one comment read. “Why is it so real

See Full Page