nooooo kameyama stop self-deprecating i think it's cool you know what's fashionable and i like appreciating them together with your observations
It's definitely a nanpa thing
this
article (which cites its own sources) backs that up. really sucks that assholes take purikura spaces as an opportunity to do whatever they want
That said , physical stickers aside you could probably just use a smartphone or just get some cheap disposable camera and hang out with friends that way
thats an interesting alternative, but i feel like part of the appeal of purikura is the sense of physically being in the booth. i guess disposable cameras would also have a special feeling from being considered vintage. smartphones seem a little too new for some reason.
when i went to taito station chain arcades, they seemed to always have a floor specifically for purikura machines. i only peeked from the stairwell entrances because i had no
friends in japan to take pics with reasons to go in there. there were several kinds of machines from different companies. im assuming the only real difference between them is customization abilities. sometimes the purikura machines collaborate with popular pieces of media, so i would probably choose a machine based on that if it was a media i liked.