The streets of Shau Kei Wan turned into a sea of colour last Sunday as local communities celebrated the Tam Kung Festival with a vibrant street procession in honour of the Taoist maritime deity.

Lion and dragon dance troupes, martial artists and acrobats paraded along Shau Kei Wan Main Street East, from the Factory Street Playground to the historic Tam Kung Temple near the waterfront.

With 2026 being the Year of the Horse, some performers also paid tribute to the zodiac animal.

Tourists and residents flocked to the narrow streets of the eastern neighbourhood to watch the lively performances and tried to touch the dragon for good luck.

The celebration of Tam Kung’s birthday culminated at the 101-year-old temple, with worshippers burning incense and paper offerings for the sea deity, believed to have the power to control the weather and heal the sick.

The birthday of Tam Kung falls on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, coinciding with Buddha’s Birthday. The festival is a remnant of Shau Kei Wan’s history as a fishing village.

According to folklore, Tam Kung was born in today’s Huizhou county during the Yuan dynasty, and at the age of 12 attained Taoist enlightenment and discovered the secret of eternal youth.

Local road goes from trash dump to treasure.

One of Tokyo’s largest and most beautiful collections of roses is in bloom right now. However, you won’t find them blooming inside a park or private garden, but right on the street in the Otsuka neighborhood in Toshima Ward.

These beautiful flowers, which are in bloom right now, are located on what’s now called Otsuka Rose Road (or Otsuka Rose Street – the signage is sort of inconsistent). However, such a pretty name wasn’t always so fitting for the place. The street used to be cluttered with illegally dumped trash and improperly parked bicycles, and had become a full-fledged eyesore. During projects to clean the place up, workers came across 100 or so rose bushes that had been planted on the roadside long ago, and the decision was made to lean into this floral theme, in hope that it would improve the aesthetics and atmosphere of the neighborhood.

Since then, the number of rose bushes has grown from 100 to 1,210, representing 710 different varieties of the flower. The community even designates the period when the most roses are in bloom as the “Otsuka Rose Festival,” which is celebrating its 25th year from May 3 to 24.

As this is a free event held on a public street, there’s no admission charged. Otsuka Rose Road runs from Otsuka Station to Fujiwara Station, with beautiful scenery the whole way.

▼ Walking route from Otsuka Station to Fujiwara Station via Otsuka Rose Road

Looking at that map, you might notice that Otsuka Rose Road follows the path of the Arakawa Line. Also known as the Tokyo Sakura Tram, the Arakawa Line is Tokyo’s only remaining streetcar line, so if you’re not in the mood for a stroll, you can also hop on the tram and view the roses while you ride.

Of course, doing the route on foot gives you the opportunity to snap photos of the flowers and tram together, and even if you’re not a train otaku, the combination is a really cool snapshot of how connected the roses are to the local community. Honestly, with the walk between Otsuka and Fujiwara only taking about six minutes, walking Otsuka Rose Road in one direction, then taking the tram back in the other, is a perfectly viable option and lets you see the roses from both perspectives.

Without any flashy, high-profile tourist attractions, Otsuka isn’t on a lot of people’s Tokyo sightseeing itineraries, but it’s located just a bit east of the Ikebukuro neighborhood, and easy to tack on as a side trip if you’re planning to visit the more well-known part of Tokyo, maybe to get some of its newly famous super salty ramen.

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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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