Photo Booths in Japan

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My brother told me about a photo booth in Iwakuni where teenaged girls cosplayed as different characters come frequent. Knowing that there are no shortage of photo booths in Japan, this peaked my curiosity. And for good reason! It is a standing photo booth, big enough for a group of 4 or 5 people! There is a big circular beauty lamp in front of you, to give you flattering lighting (almost like a professional photo shoot). Then, using my crude Japanese translator, we saw that for 300 yen, you get to take 6 photos. Before you start, you choose a couple options. First, you pick your eye enlarging option. We didn't know what that was at first, so we picked one at random. We ended up with big anime eyes as the final product!

You then choose your sample backgrounds. They have 2 Japanese models in the photos, which flash up on the screen for a moment. We inferred you were supposed to mimic their poses. They had kissy faces, cat ears, peace signs, modelesque poses, and lots more. After they flash the sample photo, you see yourself. After about 3 seconds the photo is taken. After your photo shoot, you are told to leave the booth, and go around to the editing side.

Yes this photo booth has an editing station! They show you all your photos, and you can add text, pictures, filters, and more. They had chibi bunnies, hearts, starts, and all kinds of stereotypical girly quotes to stamp all over your photos if you want. We were very confused at first, but ended up figuring it out. Starting stamping all kinds of random english phrases all over our photos. Adding bows to our hair or giving ourselves tails. I can see why teenage girls love the booth so much.

There were tons more options that we could not translate in time (you are given a time limit). You do have the option of sending the pictures to your mobile. We just went with the standard print option. They give you collage layouts. Again, just in our American confusion, we picked a random one.

You are then instructed to leave the editing booth and go to the print station on the other side. After about 2 minutes your photo strip is printed. And it is very cute!

It was a little freaky seeing our big eyes. We looked like aliens! But it was a very fun experience, and I can definitely see why teenaged cosplaying girls all pile into these booths. It's not a bad deal for what is essentially 3 dollars American!

If you ever see one of these booths, try it out! Let it show you just how kawaii you are!

XOXO

Kayko

Follow me on IG @kimychangas or Snapchat @cimychanga #kaykotravel

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