It might seem strange that people usually known for their industriousness fly across the Pacific Ocean to be photographed in plastic sheets. But that is what Japanese fans of "Twin Peaks" do on group tours to Snoqualmie, Wash., where the now-defunct ABC series was shot. They pretend to be Laura Palmer, the high school homecoming queen whose body, wrapped in plastic, is found as the series opens.

Long after interest in the eerie David Lynch series has faded in the United States, Japan is in the midst of "Peaker" mania. Several thousand fans attended mock funerals for Laura Palmer in Tokyo and two other cities earlier this year. Some people say there has even been an increase in the popularity of cherry pie, the food favored by one of the characters, the F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper.

The new movie, "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," has been playing here since the mid-May, though it won't open in the United States until Aug. 28 -- the reverse of the usual screening pattern for an American movie.

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 Wowow, a pay television satellite channel with a mere 900,000 subscribers.