We strap on our shoes and head into downtown Tokyo for a philosophical conversation prompt and a walk with a whole bunch of people we’ve never met before.
Japan is right in a special sweet spot right now weather-wise, where the chill of winter and allergy-triggering pollen of spring are gone, but the sweltering heat of summer hasn’t arrived just yet. That makes the conditions ideal for a nice walk with friends…or, as we experienced in downtown Tokyo, a nice walk with complete strangers.
This unusual opportunity came to us thanks to Taiwamura Walking Club (or Taiwamura Sampo-bu, as they’re called in Japanese), an organization that puts together group walks by setting a time, meeting place, course, and a lightly philosophical topic to discuss as you stroll. For the session we joined, the group met at 10 a.m. outside Ueno Station, with an equal mix of men and women. There was a wide range of ages too, with the youngest being a 19-year-old college student and the oldest members old enough to be her parents.
Taiwamura Walking Club usually limits the number of participants to 10 people or so, and after everyone arrived, the session started with a quick round of self-introductions. Then we were off and walking, with the Taiwamura Walking Club representative leading the way.
As mentioned above, every walk that Taiwamura Walking Club organizes has a conversational theme (taiwa is Japanese for “discussion,” after all). This isn’t a debate club, though, so the topics aren’t contentious or requiring of specialized knowledge. Instead, they’re relatable conversation prompts, and the one for our walk was “Why does loafing around the house make people feel guilty?”
As we soon learned, the combination of walking and talking is surprisingly clever. Because you’re on the move, there isn’t any of the pressure to keep up a constant stream of chatter like you might feel sitting down face-to-face at tables in a cafe or standing near somebody at a party. Walking the route that Taiwamura Walking Club prepares gives everyone a shared goal that helps keep occasional silences and pauses from feeling awkward, but the goal is simple enough that it doesn’t demand 100-percent of your concentration either, giving participants ample leftover mental capacity to talk with one another.
Again, because this isn’t a controlled debate, the conversations were very free-form. The official topic is really just a jumping-off point, and as we chatted with the other strangers-turned-companions, our conversation meandered into all sorts of other topics, whether work, other hobbies and interests, or daily life, before coming back to “Why does loafing around the house make people feel guilty?” and then flowing into yet other non-pre-planned topics.
Because of that, we didn’t arrive at any indisputable consensus answer to Taiwamura Walking Club’s question of the day, nor was that ever the hoped-for outcome in the first place. The group did land on a couple of plausible explanations for what causes feelings of guilt after being lazy at home, such as:
● It makes you aware of how much time you’ve spent looking at social media and watching online videos without any sense of purpose.
● It’s a passive, rather than creative, way to spend time.
● If you keep on loafing around until it gets to be late at night, you won’t get enough sleep and you’ll feel exhausted the next day.
In total, we spent about an hour walking, and in addition to a feeling of accomplishment at having gotten in some extra steps, we felt mentally refreshed after having had the opportunity to talk to so many new people in such a relaxed, communication-conducive environment.
We found Taiwamura Walking Club among the listings on Peatix, an online event and community activity platform that helps organizers connect with participants, and Taiwa also spreads the word about its walks on Kokucheese, another site with a similar purpose. Our walk came with a participation cost of 500 yen (US$3.25), but Taiwa has organized free walks too, and their mobile icebreaker sessions seem like a great way to meet new people in a low-stress, highly fun way.
Related: Peatrix, Kokucheese, Taiwamura Walking Club on Kokucheese
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