From: mj1078@taurus.cse.kyutech.ac.jp (mmanuel pece)
Subject: Re: Twin Peaks in Japan
Organization: Kyushu Institute of Tech., Iizuka, JAPAN.
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 08:42:23 GMT
X-Bytes: 3548

It has been written in this group that Twin Peaks (the series) has been a 
big success in  Japan, and that the movie FWWM is a hit.
I myself posted an extract from the Tokyo Time Out that contained similar
ideas.

But i'm living here and i think that it is not such a big success.
It is most like a campaign orchested by the media. It is true that some
people talk about TP, and there are refences to it in many TV programs
(mostly Quiz). But only a few people have seen the series.

The series was broadcasted by WOW (the encoded channel that has an audience 
of one million peolpe) and then distributed in video.

I went to the very firt show of FWWM, and there was quite a lot of people,
but the theater was not full. You could see empty seats.


This morning i read an article posted by schoward@nyx.cs.du.edu (Scott Howard)

>>The following Article was recently published in the Australian "Sydney
>>Morning Herald" newspaper, and I though readers of this newsgroup might
>>find it interesting.
>>  Scott.
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>JUST ANOTHER CRAZY LYNCH MOB

[ i have deleted some parts of the article ]

>>  It might seem strange that people usually knows for their industriousness
>>fly across the Pacific Ocean to be photographes in plastic sheets.

>>  But that is what Japanese fans of `Twin Peaks' do on group tours to
>>Snoqualmie, Washington, the town where the now-defunct television series
>>was shot. They pretend to be Laura Palmer, the high school homecoming queen
>>whose body, wrapped in plastic, is found washed up on the beach when the
>>series opens.

>>  Japan Travel Bureau, the nation's largest travel agency, has organised
>>six group tours, with a total of 300 people, to Snoqualmie. They stay at
>>the lodge where Cooper stayed, eat cherry pie at the diner where Cooper
>>ate, and lie on the beach where Laura's body lay. The five-day tour is
>>priced at US$2750 to US$3450.

I saw it on TV, but i didn't know it was a tour only for Japanese.


>>  Some people say there has even been an increase in the populatiry of
>>cherry pie, the food favoured by one of the characters, the FBI agent, Dale
>>Cooper.

It is true. Here in Fukuoka there is (at least) one coffe-shop that
has a "TP Menu".


>>  But if all this seems strange, the strangest aspect of all might be this:
>>relatively few people here have actually seen the series. The show is
>>carried only on pay television satellite channel with a mere 900,000
>>subscribers.

Lots of people talk about the series, but if you ask them they will say:
xx"i haven't seen it"


>>  Since March 1991, the channel has shown the entire series six times and
>>it is now on the seventh round. Late this month, it plans to show all the
>>episodes in a 28-hour marathon.

It was last Satruday, 25th. A way of compite with the opening ceremony of
the Barcelona Olympics, i guess.


>>  "The way it became popular was unprecidented," said Makoto Takimoto, a
>>film critic and senior editor of Jiyujikan, a leasure magazine. "I don't
>>think, generally speaking, that David Lynch's view of the world fits the
>>Japanese feeling. That's the point I have trouble figuring out."

Me too.

>>          The New York Times


By the way, it is strange how sometimes something that is no so succesful
in its original country becomes a big hit here. For example, there is a couple 
of spaniard flamingo singers ("Azucar Moreno") that you can hear these days
anywhere in Japan, but they are not so well known in Spain.

Manuel@Japan
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks