Hiya,

This has generated a lot more discussion than I would have expected, 
especially being such a minor and relatively unimportant point (well, to my 
story in any case; there's obviously bigger writing issues here).

Personally, I'll be leaving it unchanged from 'print club', though if 
necessary I might slip in a bit of narrative description of what he's 
referring to.  However,

This is part of a larger issue about foreign vocabulary in
English-language fiction. I'm not opposed to a certain amount of it,
where the significance can't be easier expressed by a straight
translation (such as in the case of -san, -chan, etc.), but using a term
just for the heck of it is never good (can anyone give a good reason why
the term "minna" should ever appear in a fanfic instead of the word
"everyone"? I think people who use this do so just because it's one of
the few words they can recognize listening to their anime...). The
problem is complicated by pseudo-English terms like "print clubs"--terms
invented in Japan by the Japanese for the Japanese, but which are based
on maybe-appropriate/maybe-not-appropriate English words. "Print clubs"
and other such terms may sound like English words, but they're not part
of an English vocabulary, and maybe they shouldn't be.

I agree with what you say above--actually, I'm even more strict on the usage 
of Japanese in a fic, and don't even like -san, -chan, and the like.  An 
English story should be in English; it's a wonderfully adaptive language, 
and there's so reason why an author shouldn't be able to imply the -chan, 
say, in the prose he or she writes.  There's a few words that only make 
sense to use, in my opinion--like 'tofu' as opposed to 'bean curd'--but 
that's because they've become common usage.  For that reason I wouldn't use 
'purikura'.

I admit that having been over here too long, some of the odd English doesn't 
strike me as very odd anymore (hey, why can't a hot dog be called a 
'frankburger'?).  In the case of print club, well... it does seem normal to 
me.  Maybe because it _is_ a club.  While not as popular as it once was, 
these print club places are still packed with school girls on Saturday 
afternoons.  (Some even have signs forbidding guys from entering unless 
accompanied by a girl--it's a perverts' heaven).  They makes loads of these 
things with their friends and trade them and collect little books full of 
mini-pictures of their social circles.  Obviously, the 'club' connotation 
doesn't carry over into the West, because I can't imagine people going quite 
so bonkers about it in North America or Europe.  As far as Japan goes, 
however, calling it a 'club' in which people make photographic 'prints' 
kinda makes sense.  Well, sorta.

-Mike Noakes
www.geocities.com/noakes_m

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