Japanese photo booth

Have you ever been to a photo booth? They are ALL OVER the place in Japan. It is kind of funny how many of them there are. There are plain ones at every train station, in case you need a photo for a passport or something of the sort. Then, you go to the photo stores or the photo booths at grocery stores and you will see something like this:



Now, at first, you might think what the heck is that? I thought it was like a dating service booth or something x rated. I found out from my neighbor's daughter it's a photo booth with crazy features, some of them even print out your pictures on sticker paper. In this case, the far left one. Today, we are going in the far right one. Here it is up close:



Let's see what happens. First, I inserted 400 yen, what a bargain!!! This screen is where you can choose the types of backgrounds for your six different photos:



This is the camera that takes your photo. I was taking the picture of it as I realized the button I pushed on some screen was the start photographing button. Needless to say the first picture was of me leaning to the bench to put my camera down to let their camera do the work. I had to quickly put the two little ones on my lap so they could be in the shot.



I'm pretty sure this screen was telling us to get ready to smile, not sure though.



This one I think is telling us to do different poses and showing us what background was coming up next (I think).



Photo session over I think there was a choice to retake if you weren't satisfied, but the button I hit must have meant satisfied:



This showed up next, go around the corner to edit the photos, this could be fun if there wasn't a HUGE arcade all around us and the 4 kids with me were well behaved enough to stay in the booth with me.



Oh, and if you didn't have to edit the photos behind these curtains:



Here we are in the editing mode. I missed the first screen because I was trying to tap it with my finger to choose which photo layout we want for our prints. Needless to say the large pen on the side didn't seem to stick out to me until time was up and the machine chose one for me. What the heck? I was worried I'd only get one pic and be stuck with the crappy first one of me. Here, you can add glasses to faces, different icons on the photos, sayings, dates, moustaches, disguises, etc. or make it like a calendar. I had NO IDEA what a lot of the buttons were.



I was just pushing stuff and I saw one button I did know how to read, which said "Owari", which means finish in Japanese. I hit it for one of the pics (you have to edit each one separately). Next thing, very rapidly, the editing screen disappeared, then two more screens showed up with two buttons to choose from. I hit one of the two choice buttons, I'm assuming yes or no, but not sure what they said. I started panicking thinking I hit cancel and that I had just wasted 400 yen. Anyways, next thing I know, out of a little door came a paper and we ended up with our pictures, not the layout I wanted but hey at least I got them to print.



This is now part of my official tour of Japan. Next time you visit, I'll be sure to take you here!