Languages

In Zermatt I had the same problem I had in Bruges where I wasn't really sure what language to try to communicate in. I don't speak German at all and Swiss German is supposed to be very different than regular German. I had this German phrase book that was terrible. It was maybe 1/2" thick but it was poorly organized and had useless phrases. The restaurant section was maybe 50 pages. It had phrases telling you how to complain about the food, how to say it was too cold and stuff like that, but it didn't have anything about asking for the bill. I looked through it several times and I'm pretty sure that this key phrase was omitted. Zermatt is a tourist destination, so everyone spoke English. I think many Swiss tend to be quadrilingual (German, French, Italian and English).
I was also surprised to see a lot of Japanese tourists in Zermatt. Many restaurants had menus in Japanese and on the trains there were announcements in German, French, Italian, English and Japanese. I didn't see a Japanese presence anywhere else on my trip except for in Zermatt. I couldn't figure out why it was there and nowhere else.