Purikura is the shortened from the word purinto kurabu it literally "print club", refers to Japanese photo booths that are incredibly popular among the country's youth. It is like 'hoover' or 'biro' in that the trademark has come to mean all incarnations of the product.

Among Japanese school children and young adults, mainly girls, young women and young couples Purikura is a popular activity. The booths let you take digital pictures with your friends which you can then decorate with the touch-screen and stylus. In these pictures, you can add frames, stamps, sparkles (in some machines these print as real glitter) and you can write and draw freehand with a variety of pen colors and styles. Then your finished pictures are printed off on sticker paper in multiple copies so you can cut them up and share them out.

Often Purikura pictures are used to decorate stationery in school but you can use them anywhere. Sometimes young girls trade their cutest purikura with each other. New machines have been featured in a magazine often have queues of girls waiting to use them and are very popular. Also, a few people might say that the best part of purikura takes place after the photos have been taken. In the mid-90s, the first purikura machines were developed, combining photos and stickers to create a hit that Japanese girls couldn't get enough of. In Japan, it is big business. Some of the bigger gaming arcades have a purikura section and others even have a dedicated floor where queues snake out of the most popular booths. purikura is an opportunity to experience Japanese popular culture, Whether you fancy a full-length pose with anime characters or a romantic snap bordered by Hello Kitty images.

Filling notebooks with many kinds of stickers that the collectors had taken themselves or received from friends was another popular trend. The machines of the first generations simply took photographs, but today's purikura booths are much more advanced. To alter backgrounds or apply a huge number of effects is possible to enhance the experience. With a monitor on the side to check and edit the captured images, Purikura machines consist of a photo booth. Today, purikura is equipped with functions to guarantee that skin looks beautiful in the photos.