magical purikura

For those of you who are not too familiar with Japanese photo booths (called the purikura), they're the rage here. Mostly teenagers and young adults frequent these and take cute pictures, usually in groups.

I've only done it once back in Niigata when I was still studying, and we were a bunch of foreigners fascinated with all things Japanese. I was hanging out with Filipino Gene and Korean Lee after a round of games and decided to do some silly poses with it.

The best thing about these photo booths is the decoration you get to do AFTER that. You can add interesting emoticons, graphics, text and all sorts of cute stuff. Then you can choose the kind of layout and number of pictures you wanna cram into a credit card sized glossy paper.

I didn't know that photo booths have become so advanced they can do instant makeover for you now! We are no longer youthful students, but with the fair and smooth skin, big eyes and thick eyelashes treatment, anyone can look like models.

This was taken a few weeks ago after church, when I suggested to try the purikura, while walking back to the station. The grrls looked rather hesitant, thinking at their age this wasn't something they'd wanna do lol!

We had fun laughing at our pictures, and decorating it afterwards. Erike, Chiharu and Akari might not want to do silly poses but at least they were game enough to come along with me.