Pika Pika

This was a fun experience! The staff is helpful at explaining how to use the machines, and they rate the machines based off of difficulty — some of the machines are entirely in Japan while others can be in English. My friend was foolishly confident in their ability to read Japanese, so we decided to go hard core and go for the all Japanese machine called Gyza. Plus the decorating options looked more interesting.
(If you’re not foolishly confident in your ability to read Japanese, the staff is always willing to help walk you through it.)
When using Gyza, make sure you select the left option in the beginning — otherwise you’ll end up taking passport style photos (yeah, that’s an option WTF?). The second menu will ask whether you want «Edgy» or «Beautify» effects. Edgy just makes the photos with sharper focus and smooths colors. Beautify removes blemishes and gives your photos glamour lighting. Both options will give you the big animé eyes that are popular in Japan.
The rest of the menu options are easy to follow, as they give you photos to kinda understand what’s going on. Be quick in your interpretation, as you only get 15 seconds to make an option! When it’s time to take your photos, you’ll only have 15 seconds to set up a pose — they’ll give you pointers on how to pose and show you how the camera angle will look. Some are half body shops, some are from above and angled, while others are full body shots. Pay attention and react quickly to the prompts, or else you’ll waste your photos. (No retakes as far as we could tell).
Once done with your photos, you’ll get to select the layout of how you want the photos printed. Some layouts have the photos equal size, while others will have you select one «dominate» photo.
Once you’re done taking your photos, you need to go outside of the booths and find which screen will have your photos for decorating. It may take awhile for them to appear, so don’t panic if you don’t see them right away. From here, you’re given about 3 minutes to decorate your photos. Both you and your friend can decorate photos, though you can’t decorate one at the same time.
Again, the menu will be all in Japanese but the interface is easy to understand. There are options for stamps, backgrounds, and other effects. The stylus makes it easy to doodle on the photos and you can change the size and color of your pen. 3 minutes was plenty of time to get our silly decorating done, and the text stamps they had were fun (oddly enough they were all in English).
Once your done, hit the button to finish (it should be obvious which one it is), then wait for your photos to print.
Docking a star because it was more expensive than I expected… most photo booths were around $ 12, so effectively $ 6 per picture. Eek. I’m not sure if this is the normal price in Japan, but at least it was a fun thing to do. They accept credit card. Also they have a check in offer for the free lamination, but they’ve been out of lamination paper for awhile and won’t restock, so don’t bother.

I’ve been here twice and each time was a great experience. The last time I went, the guy working at the cashier was super patient and friendly. He gave us lots of tips, which stressed us out instead of calmed us down LOL. It’s hilarious when my friends and I mess up our poses and panic to make the next one. Decorating is also super fun especially with the weird stickers and props.
The only thing is that I wish they had ways to make SMALL copies of the photos. They can make large copies but that’s way too excessive.

The fifth star is really just for the fact that someone decided to bless this city with these photobooths. Has nothing to do with the quality of service.
If you’re in the Japan town mall, it’s just something you need to do. just do it.
That being said the attendants that I have encountered (done it 3x) have been nothing but helpful and non pushy about add on items. (clear cover laminate protection or enlarged scan copy of photo sheet, etc.)
The prices range varies depending on which booth you go into. but I believe its average about 12 bucks? I haven’t been paying attention, just take my money photo people.
You get the full explanation if needed. You go into the booth, pick out what kinds of poses you want to take on the touch screen, then take said poses and when thats all done you get to add on emojis and other stickers to your photos if you wish. They come out of the machine all shiny and ridiculous and twee.

I’ve been coming here for years and things have certainly changed.
For one, they’ve changed the machines that accepted cash so now you have to wait in line (if packed) and give the money to the people at the front desk and then you have to follow them and they have some key to turn it on. Pretty stupid.
Prices. It used to be $ 10 now it’s $ 12, seriously?
The photo booths were replaced obviously these now suck.
Staff are a couple of annoying youngsters, they love to give attitude and it’s irritating that those people are employed when there are many others that have good customer service that would love/​need a job.
If you’re ever in San Jose go to Round 1. They have Japanese photo booths (much better quality, no shitty staff) and it’s not a hassle, it’s full of Japanese arcade games and certainly won’t disappoint.
This place used to be my favorite and now it’s crap. I won’t ever be coming here again, some things are better left alone.

This place is so friggin cute! My friend Arthur and I were gonna go YakiniQ but we ended up here during the wait time and decided to take pictures! It was my first time so I was kind of confused and trying to figure out how it works.
1. look at their templates.
2. you pay to the sweet girls at the front!
3. she gets a key and starts the machine you picked.
4. smile and pick frames.
5. now onto the decorating!
It was so cute and so fun to design and it brightens up your smile, your eyes and everything! Haha. I definitely recommend even trying it only once.

First time and I Love it. Great place to bond with love ones or even friends and family. SO GREAT

What are you doing reading these reviews? Stop wasting your time.
GET IN THERE ALREADY
YOU WILL LOVE IT I SWEAR

So kawaii!
This photo booth store inside Japan town is too much fun. They have several different machines with different designs. I chose a machine called Baby 3 in the back middle of the room. Pictures there cost $ 10 (you get two that you cut yourself with scissors). You get to take 7 photos but keep 6. You don’t get many seconds to choose them so it’s a bit of a scramble toward the end. You also get to choose 7 unique backgrounds. If the worker there asks if you want instructions on how to use the machine, say yes. Because it will help you not make mistakes choosing your photos. Even with the instructions, my friend and I weren’t able to pick our 6 photos correctly toward the end. After you take your pictures, you go to a separate part of the booth where you get 10 min to decorate your photos with hats, hair color, eyelashes, stickers, quotes etc. 10 min was plenty of time because we jazzed up our photos a ton. The machine automatically makes your eyes bigger so you look like animé characters. You get to choose if you want a vivid or a pastel background and you get to choose the brightness of the photo. Some photos are $ 12 but I don’t know the difference between the $ 10 machine & the $ 12 machine.

I’ve always loved these Japanese photo booth things! Ever since I was young, my cousin and I would pass out time in these machines despite the higher price point. It’s like an expensive Polaroid picture only you get to decorate and make your skin flawless LOL
Pika pika was perfect for me to kill some time with the BF. Now he on the other hand dreaded coming in but after taking a few pics, even he was laughing at how ridiculous we looked. For $ 10, we got two strips of 6 photos that can be put anywhere or stuck onto something! The guy working here was so nice and helpful – all in all a great time and money well spent :)

Pretty creative and fun Japanese photo booth store. The animations and the filters are super cute! Go with friends or your girlfriend/​boyfriend!

While visiting Japantown with a group of people, my friend had me come here with her. Although the only reason I agreed to go inside was to find a Pikachu somewhere and hug it. (so where was the Pikachu?!) Well it was a good experience and it was fun customizing the different pictures. Except for a noob like me I had no idea what I was doing in the photo booths. Thankfully my friend had gone to these types of places before so she knew how to do everything.

If you come to Pika Pika, there is always a guarantee that your pictures will come out super cute. Taking photos here is such a fun group activity and I recommend this place if you want to bond with friends.
The machines here are written in Japanese, so the employees here will explain how to use the machine. Without the employees, my cousins and I wouldn’t have known that there was a time limit. So thank you dear employees for explaining the machine for us and how it works before we clicked start!
Before you take the pictures, there are so many things to choose from. Everything from backgrounds, lighting, you name it. There is a time limit though so you have to make up your mind!
Pictures are taken at a fast pace, so make sure that you think fast when making different poses! Or else you’ll end up like me, only having two different faces out of the six poses you could have done. Once the photo op is over and done with, you’ll head over to the other side of the machine in which you will have 10 minutes to edit your photos. There are even more options to choose from in this stage because there are so many options you can use to edit the photos. Once you’re done, you’ll wait a minute or two for your pictures to develop on the other side of the machine.
At first, I didn’t think that the $ 10 fee was that bad but once I saw the size of the developed photos I was a bit disappointed. For $ 10, my group and I received four wallet sized photos. Imagine having six photos squeezed into a wallet sized photo. Yup. That’s how small they were. Despite the price, I think Pika Pika is a pretty fun experience. That on top of the fact that your pictures come out super cute!

To be a rent house this is the great of all. The quality of their service was different than the other place. Angel was more helpful, professional, knowledgeable, and economical. They know what thing was needed to do them. I get a E X C E L L E N T service from there. Their technology was great of all. If you want to a good shot you will need to rent them quickly and easily.

Adorable photo stickers conveniently located in Japantown. This is a fun place to spend time after browsing the other stores nearby or grabbing dinner. I recommend asking for help if you get stuck with some of the machines since they tend to be in Japanese or move quickly. Great for groups or couples. Average prices based off my previous experiences in Orange County.

Oh god, I used to come here so often back in the days… like around 2005 – 2006? I used to come here with my family and friends when I used to go to a middle school in SF. Japantown was like my second home, I loved coming here. Especially the fact that I was such a huge animé-​nerd and wanted to breathe in as much Japanese culture as I could lmfao.
This place has definitely improved over the years, and added more modern effects and advanced machines. I actually went here again a couple weeks ago with some friends who were visiting out of town. The guy that was working that day was very helpful, and even saved us $ 5 :P He helped explain all the stuff and how to work the thingy mabobs since it was, well, all in Japanese!
It was pretty to understand though, the only thing that sucks was the time limit, but I guess if there wasn’t a time limit, girls like me would take fucking years to finish taking the perfect photo we like and adding the special decorations on it, HA.
Anyway, our photo came out super cute, and this place will always have a special place in my heart for being in my childhood. :D

My friends and I adore Pika Pika! I have taken sticky pics at other shops before but my best experiences have been at this cute SF location.
Five years ago, we stumbled upon this place while perusing Japantown. The machines, although all in Japanese, were fun to use. The owner, Brian, was amiable and helpful. We left four hours later with kawaii sticky pictures and enlargements. The fight would ensue later on when it came to choosing who got what.
Two months ago, when we found out we would be making another trip to San Fran together, Pika Pika was added to the top of our itinerary right alongside Golden Gate and «Full House» house. There were new machines, including several in English amongst the old ones and our favorite machine, Numi, was no longer there. Matt was ever so kind, patiently assisting us, providing pointers, and simply going above and beyond. Again we spent four hours inside, leaving with a completely used up stamp card. Although we have technically only been to Pika Pika twice, wouldn’t you say it is more like eight times?
Tips:
1. Some of the machines can be very fast. Make sure you find out where to look before they click and you come out with eyes averted in odd directions. (See photos for examples.)
2. I think all of the machines add «makeup» and automatically edit the shots to make them super kawaii without your consent. If like me, you already have big eyes, ask which mode gives the least amount of «makeup» so it won’t be too extreme.
3. You have ten minutes to decorate. When you are waiting for the train, ten minutes feels like forever. In this case, don’t take ten minutes for granted. Each second is precious. Spend too much time on one photo and some of your photos receive no decoration. The timer doesn’t exactly count down. It ceases suddenly without any notice, so it might be handy to have one person keep time. Also, the pen on the left can only decorate photos on the left; the pen on the right can only decorate photos on the right. Sounds simple enough but you’d be surprised what one attempts when one is racing against the clock.
My dear Pika Pika, see you in hopefully less than five years!

Every time I go to San Francisco I have to make a stop at Japan Town for Pika Pika.
This place is so darn addicting and fun.
The workers are extremely nice and recommends what machines to use if you don’t know Japanese.
My all time favorite would have to be the Lumi! It’s english based and there’s a vivid and paste option to pick from.
You can expect to pay anywhere from $ 9 – 12 per machine. Don’t forget to check in because you get free lamination.

It’s really nerve-​wracking for first-​timers because everything is timed so be alert! The staff are very nice and they’ll explain the process so you’ll know what to expect.
TIP #1: Ask the staff. They’re more than willing to help. You’re dropping $ 10-​$ 12 for a photo that took maybe 3 minutes to shoot and there are no refunds for your mistakes so make sure you understand the process!
TIP #2: Plan your poses beforehand. There’s only 3 seconds in between each shot so plan about 4 – 6 poses. You don’t want to be captured mid-​blink.
TIP #3: Keep an eye out for the timer when decorating your photos and choosing a background. It would suck to leave some pictures un-​decorated because you took too long with just one picture. They say you have 10 minutes but every time I do it, it really feels like 300 seconds (5 minutes). The timer must be weird.
It sucks that these photos cost so much but the experience is fun and a must for best friends and couples.
Shout out to the 2 male staff who gave great explanation of the process and customer service when our machine malfunctioned! Thanks!

Really cute and fun photobooths. woman working here was very nice and patiently explained everything. Also it’s nice to know that you really don’t have much time to prepare for pictures and between each is like 3 – 5 seconds

My friend and I went to pika pika today and they have new machines and really changed things around here. We kind of prefer the old machines because they had better and more options but these will do. It was a lot of fun though. We spent about $ 50 because we really wanted to try all the machines. Honestly, I think $ 10-​$ 12 is a little expensive for a 4×6 photo but the results and fun we had was well worth the price. The only thing I didn’t like was the new Gyza and the rumor machine. They really made our faces look like we had extreme plastic surgery. It made our eyes huge, our jaws slimmer and head slightly bigger. I would say the best machine right now would definitely be the Baby 3 machine.

This place is a lot of fun but it was my first time and a LOT of my review hinges on that…
This place was fun, but it wasn’t particularly geared for newcomers. They do have a couple of machines that work in English and so I used one of those (The CUBE I believe) and it was a lot of fun. One of the difficulties in these units is there is a LOT of choice but each choice is timed you have to select something within a given timeframe and so for a newbie couple trying to sort everything out we timed out on a few choices and got randomly assigned things which is a bummer. There isn’t a tutorial and the staff were a bit overwhelmed at the time (several booths had people waiting) so we just ended up in the deep end.
Let me re-​iterate we still had a lot of fun. However we were also pretty overwhelmed and it would take a few more times going there for us to really get int he swing of things. That said I do plan to go back and if you already know how to maneuver the menus of these amazingly fun photo booths then Pika Pika is probably a great place. If you are first timer or a casual observer this place is kinda intimidating.

Came to Japantown during my trip, just to find this store!
I was a little disappointed during my visit. Two machines were out of order, and they only had five machines total. I was hoping for more purikura pictures booths. The prices are a bit high too. $ 10-​$ 12 for a picture?
But no matter how you break it down, it is always fun to jump into one of these machines and take super random poses with your friends. And decorating the pictures after always increases this fun experience.

There are about 8 booths for you to choose from. The booths are decorated with beautiful Japanese women in trendy makeup and clothes. A couple of the booths have English menus but otherwise, most of them are in Japanese. You can ask the staff to guide you through the menu and picture taking process. The machines only takes certain bills so you can exchange bills with the cashier.
You pick out frames but you only have a certain amount of seconds or else the machine randomly picks one for you. The machine countdowns when snapping your pictures. Afterwards, you decorate your pictures on the screen with a pen. You can use the pen to pick and plot adorable stickers and write in colorful fronts. Some booths do eye widening and can give a comical effect. Timing for decorating is more generous and I always had more than enough time. The pictures than print and come out in a slot. You can ask to get them enlarged for $ 5. The staff takes the pictures and prints them out. You have the option of cutting out the excess.
The reason why I can’t give it a higher rating is because the cost for the pictures is too high imo considering what I know. For one, in Japan, these pictures cost about a dollar. As a teen, there was a store in new park mall that had a couple of these booths and pictures were about $ 4 – 5. Here the pictures are $ 10. The booths are older machines. I saw a sign stating they have new machines but the ones I saw were there for a while. Even though it is the only place I know of that carries these kind of picture machines, I feel it would be more reasonable if it was $ 6-​$ 7.
I would recommend it for the novelty or special occasion momento. If Unilocal gave us the option of being able to vote in half stars, I would give this place 3 ½ stars.

Omg this place is so damn kawaii. My bf and I came here during the Cherry Blossom Festival. I’ve been meaning to come here for the longest time! What girl doesn’t wanna take kawaii pictures with their significant others?
It was kinda hard to find this place at first. We didn’t know it was in the little strip mall upstairs. As expected, the place was packed. I believe we paid $ 10 for the Candy Carnival photo booth.
The whole experience is cute. You get to take cute pictures and decorate it. I also like how they have translation photos on the booths on how to work the screen when you’re done, since it’s all in Japanese!

This place is SO. FREAKING. CUTE.
Forget about headshot photo booths that you would find at any other place, or even a selfie. Pika Pika seems to specialize in full-​body, cutsie, novelty pictures! It’s $ 10 to use the machine and receive small stickers at the end of the session; an addition $ 5 for slightly bigger photos. It’s worth it to pay the extra $ 5 and scan them when you get home.
Booth is HUGE, it could probably fit 4, but I would recommend 3 for maximum cuteness! They have so many backgrounds to choose from, and the only bad part is: It’s timed, so you have to choose quickly. It’s good to go in knowing what you want and what poses you’d like to do. My friend and I didn’t, so we kinda winged it lol.
Got to go to outer-​space! How often can you say that and have actual photographic evidence?
The most fun part is at the end, when you can decorate your pictures by hand in another booth. I wish we had a place like this where I live!

Ay! I’m turning Japanese!
Literally!
Photobooth (or photobomb?) fun in the middle of Japantown — if you’ve ever been to Japan you’ll consider this a superb playground. I had so much fun over there and if it wasn’t for the quite expensive pictures ($ 10+ for two rather small prints) I’d spend hours here!
Still 5 stars. If you have out-​of-​towners visiting and want to show them something unique, fill them up with Ramen first and then bring them here. Pika Pika!

Photo booth silliness!
When was the last time you posed and made smiley, crazy, lovey dovey faces inside a photobooth? decorated your own pictures with cutesy ribbons, hearts and skulls? Just add a splash of Japanese writing and a cool polka dot border and voila! insta-​fun for only $ 10!
The editing machine will print out your glossy creations in under 10 minutes, but you need to ask the staff for some help on how to use it. Have fun, be silly and be KAWAII!

I love pikapika, I really do. But I absolutely HATE how their prices have skyrocketed over the years. I’ve been a loyal customer since 2008, when the cheapest machines were $ 6 & the newer ones were usually $ 10.
It really sucks because purikura is usually only $ 4 in Japan. But pikapika has a monopoly on purikura machines in the Bay Area, it’s the only place (correct me if I’m wrong!). Now their most expensive machine (LUMI) is $ 14?!? If you’re going to charge $ 14, I hope the purikura machine is of the latest year & model.
But… a part of me still pays the money to take purikura sticker pictures because it’s simply a lot of fun and a good way to make memories (as opposed to a normal dull photobooth).
Personally, I really like the LUMI. it’s the most expensive one & the newest model, so the quality should come out a bit cleaner. Although the LUMI may be $ 14, but it’s also the only machine there that takes full body shots (which are perfect for outfit pics & cute IG pics! haha)

When I was a child, I have always been told that I had a pikachu voice. After more than twenty years, my friends and I had finally arrived the place that was named in honor of me — Pika Pika.
This sticker place provided great service. The cashier gave us recommendations on the machines. In addition, he helped us to fix one of the machines.
The major downfall of Pika Pika is that the price of using the machines is high, especially when several of them are outdated.
Although there is no pika pika machine, the selection of machines are diverse, ranging from Tokyo girls to cute animals. I definitely recommend Unilocalers to stop by!