New Construction Sites

The building site outside the train station in one of Tokyo’s main evening life and shopping areas had the standard employees in tough caps and fluorescent vests. And, not typical, two pink-and-white hey Kitty figures holding off the obstacles that keep pedestrians from stumbling into a hole within the road.

Such numbers, alongside above 30 types including elephants, giraffes, deer and dolphins, appear on roadway obstacles all over Japan, an attempt to amuse passers-by just who might otherwise respect building websites as nuisances. They have been part of a culture of “kawaii, ” japan word for cute, an adjective not generally of building web sites somewhere else.

Sendai Meiban, making road signs, traffic cones along with other construction-related materials, stated it introduced its first kawaii traffic barricade, a monkey, decade ago on Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s primary countries.

Tetsuya Hatakeyama, an official during the Tokyo National Highway Office that authorizes road work in the town, said the Hello Kitty figures spotted on train station in the shopping district, Shinjuku, had been introduced in December and have now become some thing of a visitor attraction. Foreigners stop for selfies using figures, he said, and “children area and revel in all of them.”

And it goes beyond commercial cartoon figures.

Fusao Hasegawa, 27, a contemporary singer in Tokyo, is trying to transform the humble traffic cone into an art. He's got created cones imprinted with a mold associated with the face of Jizo Bosatsu, a Buddhist deity known as the guardian of roadway. A number of had been placed around temples in Kita-Kamakura, about 30 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.

Mr. Hasegawa stated he was also attracting regarding the custom of Do-So-Jin, a category of Shinto gods believed to watch over travelers and sometimes memorialized in rock figures set because of the part of roadways.