Oh no, sorry Elise.
I put this over your face -
Oh no!
Hey everyone, it's Elise Hu from NPR news, and I'm Kat Chow also from NPR news.
We are in the neighborhood of Harajuku in Tokyo on the main drag here, Takeshita-dōri,
where we're going to try out - purikura!
So, the whole reason we're on this street is because we're going to try out Japanese
print clubs, that's where the word purikura comes from.
It's short for purinto karabu.
These are Japanese photo booths.
They're pretty amazing in that after you get the photo taken
you can put all sorts of filters on yourself.
So, it's kind of like the original Snapchat filter.
All right, that's a good description.
Ok, so these huge things, these booths actually have different sections.
One part of the booth you actually take the photo and then you rush over to the other
one and decorate your photo.
Ok here we go.
Insert 4 coins and touch the display screen to start.
Ok, there's a green screen.
All right.
Ok so I'm feeling really nervous.
Get in there!
Oh wait there's more. Wait, what? We weren't ready!
Ok, we leave. We're going to the next booth.
Here we go!
All right, this is where it gets really tough.
Oh my gosh.
We were too slow.
What is happening?!
Kat, I'm about to do this to your face.
I think you need bigger eyes, and I'm going to make your face smaller.
Ok, so let's say we're done, even though we have a lot more we could do.
I don't know.
I thought we looked really hot after we changed our faces drastically.
Awwww, those are cute!
What we really ought to do is talk with these school girls who are here who know what they're doing,
because they probably do purikura a lot.
Check this out.
This is my first time to try this so I want to know,
how do you make a really good purikura experience?
How do you look really good?
You should hide your face with your hair to make it smaller.
Ok, so you cover your face because the idea is that
your face needs to be as small as possible.
So, these girls, they say to make a really good purikura you really need to cover.
When it comes to decorating, what are some tricks that you do in post production to make
the purikura look excellent?
Now the trend is you don't put decoration.
No decoration is the trend.
So now that we've got some instruction from the Japanese teenagers,
we're going to do it their way.
The right way.
The correct way.
The cool way.
Elise tries purikura take 2.
New booth.
Which one?
Barbie, we're going to do Barbie.
So the idea is to make our faces as small as possible.
Let's go to the left corner!
Oh, this one!
Come on in.
We should do this one at a time, yeah.
I like this one, this one is classy.
Ok go for it.
Oh wait, I just got blue eyes, i just got blue eyes!
Whoa I've never had blue eyes before, you should totally keep it!
Wow!
You don't even need to go to the salon.
Oh my gosh, this is like a western version of me.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this look.
You want to change our lip color?
Yeah.
We should be vivid pink.
Except it distorts because of the size, like, why does my hand look like a mitt?
Also, it makes your hand paler, you can kind of see the tan line of your hand.
You know what it did, it also lifted my epicanthic fold.
It did! It gave you a bigger double eyelid.
Oh yeah, me too.
This is so controversial.
Our photos are out, our photos are out!
Wow, this is shocking.
So, what shocked you the most about this experience, Kat Chow?
I mean, I feel like I've heard about things like this and also I've done a lot of Snapchat filters,
so I've seen my face get distorted, but the automatic-ness of it was surprising.
Yeah, so even without any sort of decoration or enhancements later, these photos already
assume that you want certain things.
Yeah, that there's sort of like one standard of beauty that you should really strive for.
So, that opens up a lot of questions, but overall in terms of "Hey, you happen to be
in Japan and you have 400 yen to spend."
And maybe 45 minutes to kill.
This is pretty fun.
Why not? Try it.