From the NY Times:

http://tinyurl.com/ek8v

"It's a long way from home, but this bucolic island of gingerbread
cottages and rolling green hills is where generations of Japanese
girls have dreamed of getting married, or of simply visiting before
they die.

"As adults, they come by the thousands every year, a few with their
hair dyed red and tied in pigtails just like Anne Shirley, the heroine
of "Anne of Green Gables," Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel about the
irrepressible orphan from the fictional town of Avonlea."

Uh... what?

John W.