Wednesday 9 February 2011

How to Take Purikura Part 1: Finding Your Machine

So you want to take purikura? Here's my handy six part guide!
Typical Purikura booths



Purikura machines are usually located in Game Centres (Arcades), as a purikura corner (プリクラコーナー)


 Often the arcades that have them will have some kind of poster or sign up outside, especially if they have a new machine. Look for pink cutesy signs that say プリクラ with pictures of impossibly perfect and heavily made up girls.
Advertising poster for Tsubasa's latest machine.

If you want to ask if the place has purikura you can say:

すみません、ここでプリクラ出来ますか? sumimasen, koko de purikura dekimasu ka?
(Excuse me, can we do purikura here?)

Not all game centres have purikura but most have at least a couple of machines.

TIP! Obviously the machines in game centres are inaccessible once the game centre closes (usually around 10 or 11) so if you are off on a night on the town get your purikura done before you go out (or while changing venues). Having said that my ex once took me to a 24hour game centre at two in the morning to take purikura!

Other places you might find purikura machines are:

In the foyer of karaoke places
In shopping centres (sometimes within the game centre but sometimes elsewhere)
In tourist places (often these are old but they can have unique stamps for the place
In clubs (there’s an old-school one in Atom, Shibuya)
In 100 yen shops (cheapo purikura!)
The machines also pop up in the most random places so keep your eyes open!

Before you choose your machine you might need change, luckily game centres always have change machines!
Change Machine


So next you need to choose which machine. The more popular/newer ones may have a queue so if that’s what you are looking for join the queue and see what you get! Bear in mind that in a machine with other people waiting to take pictures you won’t get any bonus time when you are decorating!

Otherwise, all the machines have advertising pictures on the outside that shows you the “selling point” of that machine. The explanations are in Japanese but you can get an idea from the pictures what the machine can do. The machines also have example purikura on the sides so you can get an idea of the stamps/orientation of the pictures.
Example Purikura

Once you have found the machine and chosen which one you want you are ready for the next step!

For reference, this is the machine we'll be using for this tutorial:


3 comments:

  1. I really wanna ask for some recommendations if I am going to have purikura with three people, which machine do you think is good for 3 people? Thxxxxx ! XD

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wanna know if there is any recommendations of purikura machines that can be with 3 people, plz recommend some!!! Thanks :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Any machine can be used for three people, I'm not sure that there's one I would specifically recommend unless you want special frames in which case Otome3 if you can find it... I was planning a three people pose post I might have more to say then!

    ReplyDelete

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