Trip to Japan~Bite of Japanese Pop Culture "Purikura"

I shared about one of my sisters several times on my blog. I have another sister that is 20 years younger than I. Yup, you read it right, 20! I got married and moved away when she was 2, so I really wasn't there to see her grow up. Also it was hard to have a "sisterly bond" with her.

One of the things I wanted to do during the two week stay was to spend some time with her and get to know her more.

Many nights we stayed up late till 3, 4 in the morning and talked a lot. She cooked for me (she is an excellent cook!), we watched movies together, went shopping... and we did "purikura" together.

What's purikura? Basically, it is a very high tech photo booth. I found a link that explains it very well, so if you are interested you can read all about it. Purikura is VERY popular among teens, and there were lots of pictures in my sister’s room as well.

I watched a documentary about purikura once on TV, and they were saying that it is so advanced that it will automatically make your skin look prettier in the photo, allow you to play around with the photo before you print it out, and send the photo to your phone too.

So, I am a very curious being, I decided to investigate this very popular pop culture of Japan...

Well... there were lots of young girls taking pictures as they were talking and laughing in their high pitched voices... I was a little embarrassed to even be there but decided to have fun with my sister, and I did it!

These are the pictures...

There is a suggestion on the screen of what kind of pose you should do for each shot. I really didn't know what to do, I just followed the instructions.

After taking the photo, we can choose the background, add or write things on the photo.

We had so much fun doing this together, we were laughing throughout the whole thing.
I think this is actually our first photo together in so many years.

As I saw on TV, purikura took really good pictures of me with flawless skin. I think I look at least 5, 10 years younger. Though, I didn't miss my sister mumbling "fraud"! I showed the picture to several of my friends my age; they all wanted to go take pictures at the photo booth. :) Yup, I tested purikura and it was a lot of fun and a cheap way to buy "happy"(it was 400yen, which is about less than $5). I can put my seal of approval on it.