Purikura/Neoprints in Singapore

Purikura Machines (short for "Purinto Kurabu", or "Print Club" in Japanese) were all the rage a decade ago in most Asian countries, and still prove to be a popular hit with the female Asian youth of today. The Purikura Machine is pretty much a glamorized version of a standard photo booth - it takes your picture, runs it through several filters that will make any camwhore shed rivers of envy, then lets you prettify it with cutesy graphics and cool Engrish phrases before printing them out into ready-to-stick glossy miniature photos (more commonly referred to as "neoprints") that you can share with friends or paste on letters to pen pals.

Here in Singapore, these neoprint machines are normally found in most popular shopping complexes, usually in buildings which have cinema theaters in them. The one we frequent is in Bugis Junction and the shop is often crowded with schoolgirls and women with their unfortunate boyfriends:

...well, except today. Today wasn't as busy. Which was good for us.

 We're both pretty camera-shy people and kinda self-conscious about how we look, but the fun of taking the pictures and decorating them afterward pretty much outweighs whatever confidence barriers we have. This is how a neoprint machine works:

Click for a larger view and more explanations!

It's pretty simple: You go into the booth, insert your coins (normally 11 - 13 SGD), take 5 - 6 shots of yourself and/or your friends; exit the booth, go into the decorating booth, decorate your images, and then collect your photo from the print out station located at the bottom of the side of the machine. You're given about five seconds to pose for each shot, so get ready!

You can choose to mimic the poses the models adapt on-screen or come up with your own poses beforehand. After you've taken your shots, you're allowed to select which few you would like to send for printing. Once that's confirmed, it's on to the decoration!

You even get to choose how many shots you'd like printed! You can't decide exactly WHICH shot gets printed in what size, unfortunately.

The unfortunate thing about Purikura Machines is that every single one of them is in Japanese. There are no translations, no subtitles, and selecting the types of lighting/decoration you want to use involves a lot of guesswork or familiarity with the machines. Most of the machines run on a time limit too before the shots are sent to print, so try to get all your pictures decorated evenly before focusing on any single one. The decorations vary widely depending on the Purikura Machine used, and some of them offer much wider ranges of backgrounds/borders/accessories than others.

If you don't mind showing your face to the world, there's a little board on the far wall that lets you stick up your neoprints for everyone else to see!

It's really all about luck and experimenting if you want to take the "perfect neoprint". For now I'll just take my pleasure in chronicling how long my hair gets with each successive picture we take.

Michi was quite happy with how this set of photos came out, though~