Behind the Spangly Curtain: Cheered up by a Cute Nose

We discovered the best shop in the world recently. Mike actually blogged about this himself (too many bloggers in the house) but although the facts are the same, our approaches differ wildly. He gave it one paragraph in a post about other stuff:

Pika Pika is a shop in Japan Town that consists almost solely of 7 large, Japanese photobooths. Though that does them an injustice. They have automatically rotating backgrounds that drop in and out behind you, some spangly, some lurid pink or pea green. You can photograph 10 different poses and then customise the prints with near infinite variety of insane additions (gerbils, stars, microphones and santa hats). This includes touching up, so Blues edited my thinning wig with luxurious Bob-Downe-in-dark-brown lusciousness. They print almost instantly, once you can tear yourself away from the editing screens. And they're stickers. Stickers?! Genius.

It is a good post. Here is my version.

We discovered the best shop in the world recently. It's in Japantown and is a shop full of nothing but 7 big photo booths. The walls are adorned with photos of smiling people looking as if they have been vandalised by several nursery schools worth of toddlers, half crazed with e numbers, and let loose with crayons.

We visited it on a week day and the place was packed, mainly with teenagers spending their pocket money and I have to say that if I had the pleasure of living here when I was growing up, I too would have frittered away my money here, rather than wasting it all on drugs and booze.

We wandered around the shops seeking some inspriration, utterly baffled by how to use the machines which have their instructions in Japanese. We passed by an old fashioned coat and hat stand which had a sign that simply said 'props'. It was tempting but we were too busy stepping inside machines hoping that Japanese would be easy to master in seconds, and stepping out again to watch how the youngsters were doing it. There were giggles and looks of total incomprehension and nothing in between. We were almost too shy to get help, but Mike (my hero, swoon, etc etc....) bit the bullet as he is so much braver than me and asked the shop man. He explained it all patiently to us (and complimented me on my bag so obviously he is my new best friend) and was just generally lovely despite being asked a million different things by hormone raged teens and two rigid and ever so proper Brits.

We entered the giant machine, fed it some of this fake money we use over here and pressed the buttons we had been advised to press and then pulled a variety of ugly and stupid faces as the machine randomly adjusted the background curtains and happily snapped away. When it was finished with us, we entered a second curtain clad wing of the machine. The lovely shop man actually saw us and came over to explain this section as well and embarrassingly, with my tongue stuck out in extreme concentration and possibly a little drool, I had already started to decorate the pictures with random Japanese wording, pictures of cats, sunflowers, hearts, glitter, cake, Santa hats, bubbles - you name it, we threw it on. I was able to cover the parts of my face I especially don't like with stars. I even enlarged our eyes and gave us better hairstyles with one of the pictures. We worked quickly side by side, a special kind of happy in the air, laughing at the latest creations we had made and discovering yet more options we could use.

Then when we were finished we received more instructions we could never hope to understand and we jabbed wildly at the screen as it started a countdown which automatically induces panic. You have to choose 6 of your favourite to be big and the rest will be little and even though you have been told this already by a lovely man who likes your bag, you make all the wrong choices and start to sweat a bit and you are glad you are sitting behind a curtain so no one can see you, and wish that you weren't the oldest people in the shop, or British, or anything else that makes you stand out so very much.

Then it's all over. We came out from under the curtain and tried to work out where our photos would come out praying that we got their first.

My toes were tingling in excitement and joyous anticipation. The photos came out practically straight away with none of the dryer business you get from back home. They were dry and perfect and a colourful mess of face and santa hats. As Mike mentioned, they are also stickers. Stickers! All for $7. The best fun in the world and you get to take home stickers with your face on?? Perfection itself.

Next time, we will be using the props....