Puri-Kura

Puri-Kura is everywhere in Japan. Digital photo booths that are swarmed with girls posing and hamming it up. Various backgrounds can be chosen, and after the photos download, you can customize them with frames, writing, random icons, really just about anything. For $4 you get 6 pics, with 4 customized. The students in JHS n SHS collect these suckers to no end. Between classes, students crowd around and pore through their albums.

I avoided these as dangerous money-suckers. And as being too damn cute. And as collectable, something that is inherently money-sucking. But as it is a super-Japanese thing to do, I went the day before my bday back in Feb [so I have a pic of my last hours as a 25 year old!], and then Johanna convinced us all to hit a booth after Spider-Man. Watching her work on the customizing, I realized how much fun puri-kura could be if you were good at it. Which takes practice. Which takes moula. And a willing partner-in-crime, and with Mari n Aaron opposed to it, I can breath easy knowing our 500-yen coins will stay in our inoshishi bank instead of being fed into the booth to fund a new hobby. Whew!