A Phone That’s More Than a Phone

The culture of cute is rampant in Japan, especially with the youth. One trend that remains ever so popular, and to which I myself have succumbed in my youthful days, is taking silly/cute/glamourous pictures with friends in pod-like photo booths. Back in the day, these pictures were printed out on wallet-sized cards or a page of stickers, but this time around I observed an interesting phenomenon of downloading the images to cellphones.

Considering the ubiquity and high-tech functions of the cellphone in Japan, it seems like a natural evolution of the “sticker booth” past time. Rather than printing out physical copies of pictures, you can now simply put your cellphone up to a screen at the side of the booth, and voilà, the images are available on your phone ready to be used as wallpaper or mass-mailed to your 100 closest friends.

{ Tags: culture, japan, mobile, social }