Purikura

Purikura is a hobby? Craft? Skill? Art? Here in Japan.

Purikura プリクラ is what the photo sticker booths that allow you to add crazy elements, lighten your skin and make your eyes look bigger are called here. The name is actually shorted from the Purinto Kurabu プリントクラブ (which is Print Club in English).

There are varieties of purikura and each photo booth offers different styles of backgrounds, skin lightening or darkening effects and eye enlarging effects. There are some booths that are meant to be soft and some that are meant to be vibrant and bright and some that allow for some weird border images. All these elements of the photo are chosen before you start taking the photos and then applied to the final image.

Next comes the most nerve-wracking part of the whole thing and that’s coming up with poses and how to stand in the photos. You want something different in each photo, but there is barely time to think of new poses in between the shots. To help with the posing some of the photo booths have examples of what poses you could try. If there are more than 2-3 people it gets hard to fit everyone into a photo, that’s the challenging part if you’ve got all the posing figured out.

After you take the photos you go over to the computer and then add in extra details. You can put hats, glasses, ears, mustaches, makeup, words and banners and a bunch of other sticker like elements to the photos. This is the fun part of purikura, it’s also the most nerve wracking because you don’t want to go overboard with the additions, but you don’t want to leave the images too bare because then you miss out on the fun.

Then it prints out in a sticker strip with all the photos you’ve taken.

I’ve gone twice so far and I’m sure that I will be going a few more times before I get home. If you’re able to find a purikura where you are I’d say try it.