Heidi cartoon and Japanese tourists in Switzerland

While we were at the train station Lauterbrunnen, on our way going up to Jungfraujoch, there was a reserved train with about 50 Japanese tourists, and around half of the tourists around us were speaking in Japanese. One of them was lifting up a yellow umbrella all the way from the departure station at Wilderswil to Lauterbrunnen, I supposed he is the tour guide. When our train was moving up, we noticed that the Japanese tourists were all over the mountains! At that point of time, we did not know why Jungfrau is so popular for them.

As we expected, the Jungfraujoch mountain is full of Japanese tourists, and sign boards in Japanese. Then the biggest surprise came along: all of them were eating the same type of instant noodles. I was thinking that it was probbaly the tour guide who brought the cup noodles and arranged with the restaurant at the top of Jungfraujoch to prepare the hot water. The answer is: No. THis restaurant offers cup noodles of hot and spicy flavour at 7 swiss francs (about 5 € or 22 RM)! We also got ourselves a cup noodle each to join the fun and we drew attention from them throughout the meal.

When we reached the village Wilderswil after the day trip to Jungfraujoch, Francois told me that Jungfrau and Interlaken look very similar to the sceneries in a cartoon called "Heidi". We soon looked through the internet to find some video clips about Heidi, and true enough, a flag very similar to the flag of interlaken appeared in the Introduction part of this cartoon.

As Francois said, Heidi was living in her granddad's house in a swiss mountain, with goats, cows and nature around her. Lucky little girl! They have a St Bernard dog named "Joseph"(Japanese version; its name is "Hercule" in the French one) .


You might be surprised, the productor of this cartoon was a Japanese! Even though this cartoon was originated from a novel "Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning", usually abbreviated "Heidi", written by a swiss author, Johanna Spyri in 1880, the cooperation between the Japanese and German producer had made it a success all over the world. Besides the Japanese, there were quite a number of Middle East tourists as well, and could it be also the popularity of Heidi in Arabic version?

Switzerland is apparently a dream-like destination for the Japanese tourists: Swiss Alps, fresh air, stunning lakes etc..... It has been reported that Heidi has drawn them to Switzerland to see her village called Maienfeld, as well as other destinations with similar sceneries.


I have just watched 2 episodes of Heidi cartoon, it seems to be an extremely "touching" cartoon describing a life of an Orphanline girl in the Alpes. I might get myself the book to discover more about this famous little girl.