Google Maps pranks are great, particularly when they indulge in surreal and almost-creepy imagery for maximum weirdness. Like, yeah, mooning the camera on top of the Street View car is fun and all, but you know you’re just going to get blurred out so what’s the point? Better to round up a group of people flash-mob style to do something completely bizarre with rubber masks, which is what this bunch of Japanese students did. I mean, I’m just assuming — As Doctor Who taught us, they’ve got to be students to get that many people dressed up and being silly. That or they’re aliens. Doctor Who taught us that, too.

The photo was taken on a sidewalk along the Tamagawa-josui, which as I understand it is a tiny channel in the Musashino district of West Tokyo. Apparently there’s also an art school there, Musashino Art University, which explains a lot about this. Every pretentious art school student I know has a rubber animal mask to use in all their weird films, so it probably wasn’t too hard to get a bunch of people with the same mask together. I mean, they practically give them out at orientation.

The weirdest thing, though, is what happens when the Street View bike crosses them and you turn around to look back:

Gah. This just got way creepier. Shoo, pigeons! Shoo!

(via Google Maps)

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