Puri what?
Skip the Filler via flickr; Pukikura photos printed and ready to go, xmacex via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
I was reading the San Francisco Chronicle and saw a headline with the word, purikura.
Purikura. Have you ever heard of it? Well, it turns out that it's a sticker/photo craze that was introduced in Japan in the mid-90s. I went on an Internet hunt to see what else I could find out, and I couldn't believe all the links out there about purinto kurabu (where the purikura name comes from), which means print club in Japanese. The process begins in a very tricked-out version of the old photo booth. After you get your snaps taken, there are all kinds of customization features that you can add to your photo. You can choose a variety of frames, backgrounds, sparkles, patterns and using the digital pen, write a personal message. Once you've finished your custom artwork, the pictures come out of the machine on paper labels, so you can use them as stickers. Just cut them out, and off you go.
purikura.org; Daisi Doody via flickr; Purikura stickers on the Powerbook cover, jmurawski via flickr /Artwork:
designslinger]
Apparently, purikura is very popular with girls and young women, though based on the
images I saw as I was exploring, a wide variety of the population has gotten bit by the puri bug. Trading your picture with someone else is very important, and some people carry around huge albums of pictures that the contain the thousands of images they have traded for. I guess you could say its like a version of stamp collecting since the pictures are quite small. Decorating your laptop, your cellphone, your refrigerator, your key chain; any surface is fair game.
If you're in San Francisco, you can go to PikaPika in Japantown and create your own
purikura. I guess, depending on where you live, you may find a purikura photo booth in a local mall or arcade. Or, you can go online at phozi.com, get the webcam in view, and create your purikura in the comfort of your own home. Andy Warhol would've loved this.
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