Land of Cute--Construction Zone

The library is on the other side of the station from here, so we tend to reserve books online and only go once a week or every two weeks.  I don't mind going that way, though, because there's usually somebody in the river--Kosagi or Aosagi, pintail ducks migrating through in the winter, sometimes cormorants.

The other day I came up out of the tunnel that goes under the train tracks to find that the concrete sides of the riverbank were being torn out and re-done.  The open areas were carefully blocked off so that no one would topple into the river.  Blocked off with these:

Why they felt that the stabilizers holding the poles should be shaped like winking frogs was not entirely clear to me.  I also noticed that I was the only person who appeared to notice these 'tweet wittle pole-holders.  The Japanese simply expect that their construction sites will adhere to a certain level of cuteness.  When I lived up in Tokyo (just after getting married), I used to see the most adorable little...power shovels. I know-- "adorable" is not the adjective you usually see describing "power shovel", but, well,  this is The Land of Cute.  Power shovels must be two shades of teal with purple accents!  I used to wonder whether high school girls were in charge of decorating the power shovels of Tokyo.  The first time I saw one, I checked all around it--I was convinced that there *must* be a Kitty-chan sticker on it somewhere, and  was mightily disappointed not to find one.  I still think somebody vandalized that power shovel....

And those construction safety fences...you didn't think they only made frogs,did you? ;-))

The Year of the Rabbit