Whilst in Kyoto yesterday, Liz, Sayaka, Mark and I tried out the latest in trendy teenage fads -
Purikura. Purikura involves using a series of machines to take photographs (whilst striking up funny poses) and then decorating the photographs with all sorts of horrible, garish, pretty graphics. Liz had tried this ordeal before and had somehow survived. So, she was determined to get us all to try it. Let me take you through what happened:
The shop itself was a bit like an amusement arcade, only it was filled with teenage girls (photograph 2). I felt half like a pervert holding a bag of sweets and half like a granddad (does that give you a good vision?). There were several machines located around the room, so we walked around to try and find one that was free, which we eventually (thankfully) did.
The Photo Booth
This was stage one of the process, and proved a good opportunity to hide my embarrassed face away from the young female onlookers. Photograph 2 shows what you see when you walk into the photo booth. Essentially, it was a series of lights with a camera in the middle and a screen to show you what you look like. When we entered, there was an aroma of teenage girl sweat which made you consider vomiting in the corner right there and then (what a great photograph that would have made!). The machine took 6 photographs, with breaks in between so that we could move around and strike up different poses. The difficult thing to remember was to look at the camera and not at the screen. Once the machine had taken the 6 photographs, we sprinted out of the booth, like excited teenagers shoplifting for the first time, and moved on to machine 2…
Customising Your Photographs
Stage two involved using a computer pen to touch the screen and personalise the photographs. However, there was a catch. Everything was timed, which made the whole thing incredibly stressful. I could feel my pacemaker going nineteen-to-the-dozen and I found myself biting my Werthers Originals so hard that my dentures almost cracked and fell out. All of the instructions were in Japanese, with pictures to aid us and a big countdown clock in the middle (no sign of Carol Vorderman anywhere!). After adding all sorts of colourful graphics, the system gave us the opportunity to send the pictures to our phone. Once again, we only had a certain number of seconds in which to enter our details.
By the end of the ordeal, we left the place perspiring and I felt like I had aged another 20 years. It was sort-of fun, in a similar way to picking up a knife and sticking it into a hot toaster 'just to see what happens'…. and similarly shocking.
Photograph 3 shows us sweating outside the Purikura place and photographs 4 and 5 are two of the resulting photographs.