Photo Booth Fun!

The beloved pastime of every junior high school student: print club (or purikura in the Japanese ‘let’s-shorten-everything style). Simply put, they are the super successor of the passport photo booth. Not only can you take an incessant amount of differently posed shots, these machines can superimpose various images over the top of your carefully positioned photos-see below for our watermelon adventure (that actually took place behind a big green plastic block):

You can also, if you so wish (and I did), chose to include props and or costumes to enhance your lovely photos. There are racks upon racks of costumes-any get-up you like from French maid to a baseball player to a Disney character or a soldier. Although what better costume than a Japanese school uniform!


And when all of your options are exhausted and you’ve finished your paparazzi stint, you can then proceed to draw/stamp/embellish your photos of choice:
There is also an option to have these little gems sent to your mobile phone, for free!

Japanese teenagers have been known to spend all day in these booths, jumping from one to the next (there are whole floors of these machines) in a bid to fill up their purikura books. Often this is their most prized possession as it contains years of photos. A common story is that when a Japanese girl has lost her bag, the first thing she is worried about is this book. Sadly mine is a little empty at the moment..

Overall a very addictive experience, and at $4 a pop it’s definitely one I’ll return to!