you just have to get used to the heights

One of the things you get used to quickly in Tokyo is the sight of nature and culture mixing in construction sites. The fences that cut them off from the streets are decorated in large-scale tree and cloud drawings, with the controlled palette and repertoire of a child’s crayon.

Though sometimes the city gets on an identity kick, and sponsors special themes on the fences, called karikakoi (仮囲い the wrapping of provisional things). The micro-neighborhoods make site-specific commissions, like this one by the Edo-Tokyo museum, which is a national museum that has exhibitions on the building history of the city from the Edo–or pre-1868–period to the modern, when direct imperial rule was established, and Tokyo became the governmental capital.

At the same time you are time-travelling back to childhood, the upper reaches of your field of vision will be taken away by the vertical stretch of insect-like orange cranes, like these.

There have been five recent medium-size quakes in Tokyo, and seismic building restrictions are very tight. Nonetheless, buildings keep being built this high.

Buildings are constantly built and torn down, which keeps the tobiko–crane chasers, guys who load the crane–very employed indeed, though with lower wages and higher productivity than ten years ago. The Japan Times has a nice article here, which includes an interview with a 34-year-old crane operator, Ozawa Kei. Comparing the crane to a “giant mechano set,” the article describes the apparatus:

Jib cranes like Ozawa’s have a single, straight arm (called a jib), capable of moving up and down from an almost horizontal position to an almost vertical one. This means that a crane can work at a variety of distances from its base, or mast. The higher you raise the jib, the closer the load comes to the crane’s vertical structure. Add to that the ability to swivel through 360 degrees and you have a machine particularly useful for working in Japan’s congested cities, where operators are frequently required to deliver girders to sites sandwiched between existing buildings.

“After about a year you get used to the controls and can deliver loads to within a few centimeters,” Ozawa said.

The construction industry employs some 10% of the work-force, a very high proportion. In its construction economic forecast from October 2007, the government’s Research Institute of Construction and Economy
(RICE) (note: I am not making this friendly nativist acronym up), RICE states that the national annual expenditure on construction will be ¥51,000 billion (about $510 trillion, if I get the ‘0’s right).