Heidi’s Village

Staff Journal

Main content starts here.

Yamanashi Prefectural Flower Center

In August of 2019, our team headed out to the Akeno Sunflower Festival in Hokuto, Yamanashi. We got to enjoy sunflower seed ice cream, walk through thousands of flowers and take pictures that were all the rage during the festival! One thing that really piqued my interest was the theme park placed right across the street called, “Heidi’s Village.”

Now, two summers later, we have returned to the Akeno Region (in Hokuto) to venture through Heidi’s Village and enjoy all it has to offer!

Heidi’s Village is a theme park primarily based on the 1970s anime, “Heidi, Girl of the Alps” and its original Swiss novel. It’s a great place to spend your day enjoying the brilliant European-inspired architecture and the many flowers around the facility.

Heidi’s Village hosts the longest corridor of roses that is about 230 meters (roughly 750 feet) long and is a great spot to take photos that will last a lifetime! Perhaps that’s what makes this place so popular amongst the cosplay community as well. You can see the roses bloom beautifully around June, and there are over 1,200 varieties from different countries all over the world to see! Just remember, the rose festivities don’t run all year round, so be sure to time your visit accordingly if you are interested in seeing them.

Heidi’s Village is open for most of the year, but it closes for New Year’s Day and every Tuesday from January through March. Unlike the summer-only sunflower field across the street, Heidi’s Village boasts an astonishingly wide range of flowers, so it’s a great place to visit during all seasons. They also have workshops where you can make your own dry flowers.

In an effort to keep visitors safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, the village has put in place many virus prevention measures so feel free to visit this summer while the sunflowers are still blooming!

Your Swiss flower adventure awaits you!