Taking Purikura with a Baby

So during winter break one of my friends came back to town for a visit and brought her five-month-old baby. It was the first time I met him and of course we took purikura, so I thought I’d blog about how it was! Plus there’s some model gyaru mama pics later on

Ohno from Arashi Takes Purikura in Drag

Happy New Year!

I went to Tokyo for New Year’s Eve and I had a TV in my hotel room. I was watching a program (Zip?) with Arashi on it on the evening of the first and Ikko gave Ohno Satoshi a challenge. Dress in drag and go to Shibuya!

I took pictures with my iPhone so sorry about the quality…

Collection: Summer Purikura

Well, summer is well and truly here. Although I think it's less humid than last year it's still way beyond pleasant and I'm grateful for air-conditioning (though I'm trying to use it as little as possible!) Anyway summer in Japan means beaches, BBQs and firework festivals. At firework festivals girls often wear yukata and of course purikura is a must!

Masuwaka Tsubasa's Purikura CMs

I just noticed that FuRyu has a youtube channel and has uploaded a 15 second CM for Tsubasa's BF Manual Second Label release...

There's also a one minute making of video...

That's all that's on the channel for now, but I'll keep my eyes open. FuRyu seem to be the most media-savvy of the purikura/arcade game companies, they are the only ones with related twitter accounts. Could be because they also make games for the social networking site GREE so know the value of sns.

BF Manual Second Label

My first review on this blog was Tsubasa Masuwaka's BF Manual, and now there's a second version out called BF Second Label. I liked the original machine but was disappointed with the printout colours, so what's changed?

Celeb Purikura: Kimura Takuya and Yamada Yu (video)

Stumbled across this clip of Kimura Takuya and Yamada Yu attempting to take purikura with certain distractions...

Purikura segment on Himitsu no Arashi

Recently (I believe it was the 17th of February) the evermore present Arashi did a segment on purikura on their TV show Himitsu no Arashi-chan (TBS Thu 10pm). I don't have any clips or screenshots for you but I'm sure you can find it from your regular Japanese TV sources.

Basically they each took a turn being at the front to take a picture and then decorate it to see how it turned out. The guys are mid-twenties so I would guess they are maybe a little old for date purikura, they seemed a bit surprised by how big the eyes became on the newer machines.

Nino took his and the the first thing he said was "My eyes are so big!". Aiba got into the swing of things by doing a double peace pose and saying "Agepoyo!" ("gyaru" slang for raising the mood) He also wrote that on his picture.

Someone said that Jun looked like an alien in one of the pics. Guys say this a LOT when they take purikura.

Ohno's picture came out scary, the machine really picked up his lashes and he looked like a drag queen!

It's quite interesting that purikura is really designed to emphasis the "girlieness" of how you look. It makes your eyes big and cute and darkens your eye make-up. Sometimes I really think that girls look so cute in purikura but that guys look kind of weird...especially on the really big eye settings on the new machines

I wonder if the "couple course" on the BF Manual machine has some kind of magic where the boy looks more boy-ish...

Review: Masuwaka Tsubasa's BF Manual

For my first review here I’ll be looking at Masuwaka Tsubasa’s newest machine, BF Manual. It should be really easy to spot if you are looking for it, it’s white and pastels and has huge pictures of Tsubasa and her husband Umeda Naoki all over it. According to the front of the machine BF can stand for Beauty Face, Best Fashion and Boy Friend.