Taiwanese Brand Error8 (Weasel): A Visit to Its Taipei Taiyuan Road Store | Taiwan’s Korean-Style Photo Booth Industry Research Series

Summary

This article records two visits to the Error8 (Weasel) store at No. 1, Lane 11, Taiyuan Road, Datong District, Taipei: one on the evening of July 7, 2023, and another at noon on July 8. The store was unattended, with a wooden storefront, a pixel-art facial-expression lightbox above the machine, coin-operated controls, surveillance cameras, and a large Instagram QR code. No staff were present on either visit. The instructions on the wall specified: press Ready before inserting coins; insert NT$100 or two NT$50 coins; choose a theme; press Start Shooting; take four consecutive shots; review the photos, with one retake allowed; choose a style; and select either one printed set or additional sets at NT$100 each. The machine’s side bore the text Megumi Yamazaki × error8, and the Japanese illustrator’s characters appeared throughout the store. Error8 is a Taiwanese brand using machines imported directly from South Korea. It grew out of Error22 (Mole), a curated-goods café and arts space on Kaishan Road in Tainan’s West Central District. The photo booth project began with the idea of collaborating on photo frames with artists the team knew, promoting their work while giving them a source of income. As of August 2026, Error8 had eight locations, and its website homepage had shifted to machine rentals and commercial partnership proposals. Its featured offerings were the Seongsu-dong Newspaper Photo Booth, the Classic Korean-Style Photo Booth, and the Giant Four-Shot booth, which it claimed was exclusive in Taiwan. The Taiyuan Road location was no longer on the official store list.

Key facts

• Error8 (Weasel) is a Taiwanese brand. Its machines are imported directly from South Korea, but the brand itself is not Korean.
• Error8 grew out of Error22 (Mole), a curated-goods café and arts space on Kaishan Road in Tainan’s West Central District. Its photo booth line launched in 2022.
• In July 2023, the store at No. 1, Lane 11, Taiyuan Road, Taipei, charged NT$100 per set. Customers could insert NT$100 or two NT$50 coins, take four consecutive shots, and retake once. Each additional printed set cost another NT$100.
• The Taiyuan Road store was already fully unattended in July 2023. No staff were present on either visit; it operated through coin payment, posted instructions, surveillance cameras, and an Instagram QR code.
• In July 2023, the entire store featured a collaboration between Megumi Yamazaki (山崎メグミ) and error8, with the collaboration credit printed on the machine’s side.
• As of August 2026, Error8 had eight locations. The Taiyuan Road store was no longer on its official store list, and the website homepage had shifted to B2B machine rental proposals.

Just before six in the evening on July 7, 2023, a small shop with a wooden storefront was lit up on Lane 11, Taiyuan Road, behind Taipei Main Station. This is an alley piled with cartons from clothing wholesalers during the day, with metal shutters left half-down at night. Inside was just one photo booth. A line on its side read: Megumi Yamazaki × error8.

There were no staff. I went back at noon the next day. Still no staff.

A Store That Was Already Fully Unattended in 2023

Korean-style photo booths were only just taking off in Taiwan that year, and most brands were still figuring out how to staff their stores. This Taiyuan Road shop’s answer was: leave it unattended.

Four things kept the operation running: the coin slot, instructions on the wall, two surveillance cameras at the entrance plus a security company sticker, and a QR code on the glass that was bigger than the shop sign. Nowhere on the storefront was the brand’s full name written out. Instead, illustrated characters covered the wooden wall, with a pink “Welcome” beside an elderly woman giving a thumbs-up.

At the same point in time, Plan.B Studio in Ximending used the same setup. The two stores had opened a month and a half apart, at opposite ends of Taipei. Unattended stores were already the standard answer for this business format in the first half of 2023; this was not something that emerged later. My field report from Ximending is here: Opening-Day Visit to Korean Brand Plan.B Studio’s Ximen Store.

NT$100, Four Consecutive Shots, One Retake

The entire wooden panel to the machine’s left served as the price list and instructions. Translated step by step, it read: press Ready before inserting coins; insert NT$100 or two NT$50 coins; choose a theme; press Start Shooting; take four consecutive shots; review the photos, with one retake allowed; choose a style; and finally, select the print settings—print one set of photos directly, or order additional sets. At the bottom, the notice stated NT$100 per set.

NT$100 per set: that was the price in July 2023. Here are the prices along the same timeline:

The point of this table is not which brand was more expensive, but how differently the two raised prices (the full record of SMILE’s trajectory is here). SMILE increased the same product’s price from NT$100 to NT$200. Error8 changed the product: A4-size poster prints, silver metallic photo paper, and transparent sheets that could be peeled off and used as stickers. The price range rose with them. The former was a price adjustment; the latter used uncommon printing materials to push up the price per purchase, going from NT$100 to NT$250 over two and a half years.

That Line on the Machine Is the Key to the Brand

Megumi Yamazaki (山崎メグミ) is a Japanese illustrator. Her characters were not confined to the photo frames. They covered the entire machine and wooden wall, and even the Japanese slogans were hers: 仲良し (“close friends”), 友達 (“friends”), and いえ〜い (“yay!”). This was more than a promotional frame design. The whole store had been handed over to her work.

Error8 did this because it did not grow out of the photo booth business in the first place.

The Brand Grew Out of an Arts Space in Tainan

Error8’s parent operation is Error22, called 鼴鼠 (“Mole”) in Chinese. It is a signless curated-goods café and arts space on the second floor of No. 11, Kaishan Road, in Tainan’s West Central District. Its founder, Da Huan (大桓), is a Tainan native with an arts background. The shop’s name comes from what he described as Error 501 in programming, meaning “an event that has never occurred.” He reworked it as Error22 so that the junction between the letters and numbers would resemble “orz.” The Chinese name, Mole, came from a film of the same name that he liked.

The photo booth project was the idea of store manager Ziti (紫緹). In a 2022 media interview, the reasoning was stated clearly: if the photo frames could be designed in collaboration with artists they knew, the booths could both promote artistic work and help the artists earn income.

Screenshot source: beyond beyond, “If Possible, I Hope This Shop Could Be Just a Code Name—An Interview with Error22 (Mole),” by Zhou Zhou (周周), published September 1, 2022. Original article: https://www.beyondbeyond.com.tw/category/Tainan/articles/542

The sequence deserves a closer look. Competitors start with machines and then negotiate IP collaborations, using those collaborations as marketing. Error8 started with a network of creators, and the machines became a channel to support that network. The names grew out of the same logic: Mole is the parent operation, Weasel is the photo booth line, and Error22 and Error8 are siblings.

That makes all the seemingly unusual things it did later understandable: why it keeps changing illustrators, why it makes printing materials such as metallic photo paper and transparent stickers that nobody else was offering, and why it has a side business called “Sparkly Finishing” (閃亮亮加工). Among Taiwan’s first wave of Korean-style photo booth operators, it was the only brand that was not created with photo booths as its core. I have compiled the industry’s broader chronology here: A Historical Report on the Development of Taiwan’s Photo Booth and Korean-Style Photo Booth Industry.

Why Open in a Wholesale Alley Behind Taipei Main Station?

When I returned at noon the following day, most of the alley’s metal shutters were down. There were even fewer people than the evening before.

This location choice was the opposite of its competitors’ approach. Places such as Ximending, Yizhong Street, and the Zhongshan Metro Mall have expensive rents, but foot traffic arrives on its own. Lane 11, Taiyuan Road, is tucked inside a wholesale district. Customers would not happen to pass by; they would have to make a special trip. A shop like this works only under one condition: its customers come through social media, rather than its location. The QR code on the storefront, larger than the shop sign, was effectively an explanation of the business model: people had to see it on Instagram first before they would walk into this alley.

The cost was that this location did not last long. It is no longer on Error8’s official store list, nor on lists compiled by third parties. I could not establish which month it closed.

What Happened Later? An Update Added in 2026

The following are things I did not know when I took the photos and only established later.

By August 2026, Error8 had eight locations. Four were storefronts: Taipei Zhongshan, Tainan, Hsinchu Zhongzhengtai, and Taichung Yizhong. The other four were individual machines installed at Zhan Ji Spicy Hot Pot’s Dunnan branch (詹記麻辣火鍋敦南店), Taichung Qinmei 2.0 (勤美 2.0), Kaohsiung’s 月曜咖啡 café, and Kaohsiung FOCUS 13. The Tainan store is directly below Error22. One online visitor wrote that you had to go upstairs to the café to get change; the two operations are connected.

Screenshot source: Error8’s official website, stores page, captured August 21, 2026: https://www.error8weasel.com/2

The stores page is itself a clue: the official website listed only seven locations, leaving out the machine at Taichung Qinmei 2.0. That location came from a post on the official Instagram account, which was more recent than the stores page. In other words, the brand’s authoritative store list was effectively on social media, rather than its website.

Addresses and maps for the locations are updated as stores change on the Photo Booth Information site’s Error8 brand page.

The bigger change was on the website. Opening error8weasel.com now, the entire homepage is a proposal for machine rentals and commercial partnerships, rather than a store introduction:

Screenshot source: Error8’s official website homepage, captured August 21, 2026: https://www.error8weasel.com/

• Seongsu-dong Newspaper Photo Booth: uses Japanese uncoated paper, producing prints that look like inside pages of a freshly printed newspaper.
• Classic Korean-Style Photo Booth: uses pearl photo paper imported from Japan, resistant to splashes and fingerprints.
• Giant Four-Shot (大王四格): the website claims this self-service format is exclusive in Taiwan, with prints ten times the size of ordinary photo booth prints.

Screenshot source: Error8’s official website, rental offerings, captured August 21, 2026: https://www.error8weasel.com/

The listed uses are brand events, IP pop-up stores, long-term installations in shops, weddings, and year-end and spring company banquets. The selling points are machines imported directly from South Korea and the ability to issue invoices. Prices are not public; customers must request a quote. There is also a business line its competitors do not have, called Sparkly Finishing. It places service stations inside other people’s shops: 造糕的人, a cake shop in Taipei; 荒花書店, a Taipei bookstore; and a host location in Taichung. Each has fixed operating hours.

In other words, the brand’s main business arena is no longer that machine taking NT$100 in coins. It demonstrated the same logic at the 2024 Creative Expo Taiwan in Tainan, where it participated through a collaboration with the 心臟 (“Heart”) IP, placing its machine alongside those of other brands. My field report is here: Photo Booth Market Observations at the Creative Expo Taiwan in Tainan.

As for No. 1, Lane 11, Taiyuan Road, Taipei, several companies with no connection to photo booths are now registered at that address. A machine bearing a Japanese illustrator’s name once stood there. Apart from these photographs, I could find no record of it online.

Article keywords: Error8, Weasel (鼬鼠), Error22, Mole (鼴鼠), Korean-style photo booths, Taiyuan Road, the area behind Taipei Main Station, unattended photo booth stores, illustrator collaborations

Frequently asked questions

Is Error8 (Weasel) a Taiwanese or Korean brand?

It is a Taiwanese brand. The machines are imported directly from South Korea, but the brand itself is Taiwanese. It did not originate in the photo booth business: it is a product line that grew out of Error22 (Mole), a curated-goods café and arts space on Kaishan Road in Tainan’s West Central District. It launched its photo booths in 2022.

Why does Error8 keep changing its illustrator collaborations?

Because that was the idea from the start. Error22’s original photo booth concept was to collaborate on photo frames with artists the team knew, both to promote their work and to generate income for them. Most competitors start with machines and then seek IP collaborations; Error8 did it in the opposite order.

How much did a session cost in 2023?

The notice on the Taiyuan Road store’s wall was clear: insert NT$100 or two NT$50 coins, take four consecutive shots, and review the photos with one retake allowed. At the end, choose either one printed set or additional sets, each costing another NT$100. In other words, it was NT$100 per set.

Is the Taipei Taiyuan Road store still there?

No. The location no longer appears on Error8’s official store list, or in the lists compiled on this site and by third parties. I could not establish which month it closed. Its Taipei storefront is now the Zhongshan store, on Lane 96, Section 1, Zhongshan North Road, near Exit R3 of the Zhongshan Metro Mall.

What else does Error8 do now?

Beyond its stores, it has two business lines. One is machine rentals and commercial partnerships, which occupy its entire website homepage. The offerings include the Seongsu-dong Newspaper Photo Booth, the Classic Korean-Style Photo Booth, and the Giant Four-Shot booth, which it claims is exclusive in Taiwan and ten times the size of ordinary photo booth prints. The other is a service called Sparkly Finishing, with service stations hosted inside other businesses: two in Taipei and one in Taichung, each operating at fixed times.