Say Cheese!

There is a remarkably popular invention called the "purikura". Otherwise known as the Print Club (puri meaning print and kura meaning club, thus print club).

In America, I always saw these as a charming little addition to any T.V. drama special. Don't know what I mean? Just look at a good lot of the girly dramas, particularly the older ones when the fad was more popular, but even new one such as Pretty Little Liars (no, I don't watch this) feature the overused cliches of photo booths. This fascination with photo booths is primarily focused in bigger cities such as New York and Los Angeles, as they are bigger cultural melting pots with a much more hip type of crowd. They are also of course found in Asia. All over it in fact. But mostly in the idol and photography obsessed areas of Korea and Japan.
Now being an actual living being that is not on a T.V. set, I never actually saw one of these things in America. I am going out on a limb assuming they can be found in popular city centers.
I was first introduced to it in Korea. Where they have little shops devoted to it. And I do mean little, I think my neighbor has a bigger walk-in closet than these shops. In it I found the stickers of happy smiling patrons all around, counters, ceilings, windows, booths. That's right. These pics are more than meets the eye, they can be stickers too. Being new to this whole experience, I don't actually recall much of my first experience. Just that I have the itty bitty smiling faces on photo film as proof of it. It was rather overwhelming. Smile! Pose! Snap! Next! Snap! Snap! Snap!
The boom of these purikura photos hit its peak about 10 years back. Wherein you would have to stand in line to take your pictures. For this reason the machine developers instated time limits when selecting features in order to meet their supply and demand and of course make money. In some areas you can still find a line outside these booths on a tipsy summer night with some girl friends in the city.  But for the most part the fad has faded a bit. This does not prevent my students from having their textbooks covered in the little stickers.

The booth exterior, the booth interior, and the outcome ( after fun-time in the editing room of course).