Purikura and Pretty Faces

Brace yourselves! A few clicks here and there and bam!.. instant beautification.

I remember cramming into those little photo booths at the mall with my friends back in junior high and taking silly photos making goofy faces and all. Yes, we were teenagers once.

Times have not changed. At least not with us. We still make faces and have tons of fun cramming people into a small booth, but nowadays, they’re more popular at weddings than shopping malls.

In Japan, however, they’ve managed to bring back that mall-time fun with a modern, futuristic machine known as Purikura (or print club)! Gerard and I spent the day ducking from the rain in Kyoto. We wandered around and stumbled upon this place and decided to kill some time in hopes that the rain would stop.

Neither of us had any idea what we were getting ourselves into so we shadowed Japanese girls for a good 20 minutes until we got the hang of it.

We clearly didn’t dress the part but we figured the machine would make us pretty any how so didn’t sweat our bummy, backpacker attire. Not that we needed much digital enhancement to begin with but, I mean, it couldn’t hurt. See for yourself. Here’s us before, baggy eyes, blotchy face and all.

A few clicks and seconds later.. this is us AFTER!

Don’t we look polished?!.. Puss n Boots eyes and all?!! Look at our silky smooth hair and Cover Girl skin! And did you notice? They took my flat, Asian nose and made it.. Japanese? I really don’t know what they did to my nose but I like it.

I look fourteen again! And look at Gerard? I didn’t think it was possible for him to look any younger than he already does now.

Once you’re photos are taken, you have the chance to edit and enhance them even further! You can pick a themed background including color and print style. You can insert characters, choose different settings and even change your outfits!

We lightened our skin, dyed our hair even added emoticons including cheesy stuff like Bam! and happy faces and stars, squiggly lines and bow ties and glasses.

After a good 20 minutes of editing, here are the final result! We each walked away with a print and was even able to email ourselves a copy to share with friends and family online!

We struggled on our first session with the editing being timed and all, but had so much fun we did it again in Tokyo!

What do you think of our new, purikura polished looks?

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