My sister-in-law has been following the madness over at the first Japanese branch of Krispy Kreme. They opened in mid-December last year and immediately there were 200 people in line to get donuts.

Ok, so there’s a hot new shop, and a lot of people want to try it out, so as a special thing, people wait in long, long lines. Nothing weird about that.

But the lines didn’t stop. Yes, they got shorter, but a few weeks passed, and still the lines were mammoth. Then a month passed. Two months. Three months. And still, my brother and his wife told me that the long lines persist. So I decided to check it out for myself the other day, and indeed, the lines are still there:

There’s an amusement-park-style maze-line right in front of the store with what must have been at least a hundred people in it, but it was not big enough; the tail end of the line continued around the corner, with a security guard feeding the store-front line with the people from the auxiliary line whenever enough space opened up.

Amazing. Truly amazing. (And yes, those people near the end of the line have a baby in a carriage.) And it’s not like people in line don’t know what they’re getting into; there’s a sign clearly notifying customers:

The sign says, “Current Wait Time: 1:00,” with a notice below about the tail end of the line starting around the corner.

Now, Krispy Kremes may be good, but they’re not that good. It’s utterly bizarre. My brother and his wife have asked their students for an explanation, but they’re puzzled as well. Maybe I should try approaching the people in line (“Hi, I’m a reporter from ‘The Blog from Another Dimension’….”) and asking them why they’ve decided to wait for a whole hour just to get donuts. Thousands of Tokyoites, every day, for months on end.

Is it a fad? Mass hysteria? A new cult religion? A huge Homer Simpson fan club?