Job Discussion Forums

[Hoser]

This is for those of us who are not exactly proficient with photoshop and you want to save the 800 yen or whatever the local photo booth makes you pay. It's so easy-only 3 steps!

Step 1. Take a picture of yourself (or get someone to do it for you) against a white background-probably the wall of your room.

Step 2. Transfer the picture to your computer and then go to this website. http://www.epassportphoto.com/ Select your country of residence as Japan and then select the Alien Registration Photo (not Passport photo). Upload your photo to the site and then follow their instructions on how to prepare the photo (basically make a box around where your face is).

Step 3. Finally save the jpg that they give you and load it up onto an SD card or USB memory stick and take it to your local photo kiosk and print out a 10x15cm print! There you go! Should only cost you a measly 40 yen!

Hope this helps.

[Cool Teacher]

Thanks!

[gaijinalways]

Sounds like more work, which in this day and time, may not be worth it. But for those willing to shell out the time for it, why not. Hey, I might even use those memory sticks I have. they are currently collecting dust somewhere.

[Glenski]

It will actually be more expensive if you don't have a memory stick in the first place, and it will mean two trips somewhere instead of just one.

[seklarwia]

You don't even need a seperate memory stick. If you have had the digital cam in the first place to take the pic, you can then drag and drop into your camera's memory and use that as a USB stick... or you could use your mp3 player and even most mobiles as one these days... pretty much anything with memory that can be hooked up to your computer by USB can act as a memory stick without any need for installation cds.

Many people have printers that can print photo quality pics these days. After editing (which for this level you only need the standard microsoft photo editor that comes with windows, nothing fancy), save, press print, click the option to print actual size (not the one that fits the picture to the page size), set to print x number of copies on eack page, whack in a sheet of photo paper and hey presto.

I just use standard passport (3x4) pics for everything. They didn't require a specific ARC sized pic when I went to register. The embassy form back home also asked for a specific size, but they too accepted a standard passport pic. So print a sheet of passport pics and your good for a long time.

[gaijinalways]

That's a good point about using the camera one, my wife does that sometimes (though she tends to print pictures of our cat). You do realize though that when you pay 700-800 yen, you usually get 6 pictures, which still works out a little more than your 40 yen per picture.

And yes, I do have memory sticks somewhere (moved recently, and those and my post it pads are still at large somewhere).

[Hoser]